


A Routine Haunting

by myrtlebroadbelt



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Bag End, Beetlejuice AU, Dark Comedy, Death, Drowning, Established Relationship, Gen, Ghost Bilbo Baggins, Ghost Thorin, Ghosts, M/M, Post-Battle of Five Armies, The Shire, Young Frodo Baggins, but not for long
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-05-26 10:05:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6234415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrtlebroadbelt/pseuds/myrtlebroadbelt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bilbo and Thorin are just settling in for what they hope will be a very long life together in Bag End. What they get instead is a very long death. It wouldn’t be so bad if they had the place to themselves. What are two ghosts to do when their home is being haunted by Sackville-Bagginses?</p><p>Inspired by Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Luck

“We will have to get out of bed sometime, you know.”

Thorin responded to Bilbo’s suggestion, his third of the kind this morning, by promptly pulling the white cotton sheet, their only covering in the peak of summer, over both their heads. “Never,” he said simply, rolling onto his side to gaze at his hobbit in the shadowed light.

“Ach, it’s stifling under here,” Bilbo complained, nose wiggling against the fabric. He held it away from his face with one hand.

At that, Thorin sat up, placed one knee on either side of Bilbo’s hips and one hand on either side of his head, and turned himself into a tender-eyed tent pole. A soft golden glow surrounded the dwarf’s head, a pleasant effect of the mid-morning sun seeping through the cotton.

“Well,” Bilbo said with a grin, “that doesn’t do much for the heat, but the view is certainly improved.”

He lost that view momentarily as Thorin leaned down to kiss him, the sheet descending closely behind. No indeed, the temperature was going anywhere but down.

“Would that I never had to leave this house,” the dwarf sighed upon breaking away, staring down at Bilbo with _that look_ , the one that made it appear as if his heart were beating behind his eyes. “I would stay with you in bed until midday, spend the afternoon at my projects, feast all evening, and…” He whispered what he planned to do at night into Bilbo’s ear, which turned red along with the rest of his face.

“That all sounds very lovely,” Bilbo said with a clearing of his throat as Thorin nuzzled into his curls, “but you do want your things from Erebor, do you not?”

“I have all that I need right here,” Thorin murmured, drawing back to place a warm hand over Bilbo’s heart through his nightshirt.

“You flatter me, but I want you at least to have something of home with you here.”

“This is my home. And at any rate, I still don’t see why Bofur can’t bring it all to Bag End on his own.”

“It’s the least we can do to accompany him for the last leg of such a long journey. That, and,” Bilbo added, glancing away in subtle embarrassment, “I’ve been rather itching to get on the road again, even if it is only as far as Bree.”

“Have you?” Thorin asked, eyebrows raised. “Why did you not say?”

“Well, you’ve been settling in so happily here, I didn’t want to disturb anything. But this gave me an excuse. Do you feel well enough?” he wondered, suddenly concerned. “Really, I can go on my own. I won’t be more than a week. There’s enough in the pantry to last you until I return, and…”

“Bilbo,” Thorin interrupted with a fond smile, “it’s been nearly three years.”

“I know,” Bilbo said with a nod. He brushed aside a silver-streaked strand of Thorin’s hair to reveal a pale scar running diagonally across one eyebrow. He traced a thumb over it, just barely touching. “I just worry sometimes.”

His gaze fell to the dwarf’s bare abdomen, where another scar, darker and thicker, cut through coarse hair. He pressed his fingers to it gently, feeling the muscle tense under his touch.

“We’re both lucky to be alive,” Thorin said then.

Bilbo gave a small, almost indiscernible laugh. “I thought you didn’t believe in luck.”

“That was before I had it,” Thorin said, and the meaning was clear enough to Bilbo, who moved his hand away from the dwarf’s scar to stroke along his side.

“Well,” he said after a moment. “Up we get, shall we? If we want to make any progress today we’ll need to leave soon.”

So with one, two, three—really, Thorin, four?—more kisses, they emerged to greet the day, Bilbo with a bird’s nest of hair and Thorin with sandy eyes. After a wash-up and a change of clothes, Bilbo padded into the kitchen to start breakfast. Going by the time, it should really have been second breakfast, but he hadn’t been having many of those since Thorin joined him under the hill—not that he could really complain.

Thorin retreated to the spare room, where Bilbo had set up a bit of a workshop for him. He certainly couldn’t fit an anvil or a blacksmith’s stove, but he had cleared off a long wooden table and removed more than a few useless items from the shelves. He had also pushed a soft chair against the far wall, and here he was known to curl up with a book, the familiar sound of Thorin’s work usually lulling him to sleep before he could make it to page two.

Thorin spent much of his free time—and there certainly was much of it now—in this room repairing household objects and crafting new ones out of material he found lying about. His latest project was carving a frame for his father’s map, which Bilbo had carried tucked in his coat pocket all the way from Erebor. It bore both of their fingerprints, smudged in blood and dirt against the fraying corners. He set it neatly beside him as he worked, a reminder of how far they’d come.

Bilbo was just peeking in to call Thorin to breakfast when they heard the knock. Three forceful raps in quick succession. Bilbo knew it far too well. “Lobelia,” he said in a tone not unlike the one Thorin used to first announce Smaug’s oncoming attack so many years ago.

He squared his shoulders and turned away as if to answer, but Thorin stopped him with a suggestion: “You are not obliged to answer the door if you do not wish.”

Bilbo twisted around. “Oh,” he said, as if he had never thought of it. “Yes. That’s right. Quite silly of me. I suppose it’s just an old habit left over from before you… When you were…”

There had been days, before Thorin had retraced his steps and knocked for the second time in his life on that round green door, when Bilbo had waited and hoped for such a thing to happen, unlikely as it seemed. He couldn’t even say for certain that Thorin was alive then, having known him to be only half so when he left. When Bilbo had opened the door that day in late autumn, he had told Thorin he thought he was a ghost.

“I’m here now,” Thorin said, standing up to cross the room and place a hand on Bilbo’s arm, a confirmation of his statement.

“Of course you’re here,” Bilbo replied with a resolute nod, patting the dwarf’s elbow as if he were the one who needed comforting. “Which means we should get some breakfast in you before we head out. Come on, then. I’ve made us the works.”

Another knock echoed through the entrance hall as he finished speaking, this one accompanied by a muffled voice on the other side of the door. “Bilbo Baggins,” it said in an almost singsong tone—although not any song Bilbo wanted to listen to. “I know you’re in there. You’re being very rude.”

“I’d put a sign on the gate if I weren’t so convinced she’d ignore it,” Bilbo hissed to Thorin as they crept towards the kitchen.

They settled themselves at the table by the window, cracked open to let in the breeze and provide a mealtime view of the garden. Ranunculus brushed against the sill as Bilbo tucked his napkin into his shirt collar and Thorin speared a mushroom on his fork. He hadn’t eaten many of them before living in the Shire, but he’d come to rather enjoy them, not to mention marvel at just how many different varieties there were—nearly as many as pipe-weed, which he’d also come to esteem.

“She’s still dreadfully bitter that I didn’t die on that adventure,” Bilbo said as he sliced through a sausage. “I half expect her to stab me in the marketplace with my own sharpened spoon—I know she got away with at least one of them.”

They winced through yet another knock. “That’s probably the last one,” Thorin said, voice betraying his pessimism.

“What does she expect me to do, just hand the place over to her?” Bilbo wondered, reaching across the table to brush away a bit of scone with clotted cream that had found itself trapped in Thorin’s beard. “She keeps telling me it’s better suited to people with children, and ‘ _You_ obviously won’t be having any,’ she says.”

His imitation of her voice caused Thorin to briefly choke on his bacon from laughter. Bilbo poured him a cup of tea—yet another product he never expected to enjoy quite so much, although he still preferred coffee, which usually came at elevenses.

“She’s already got that dreadful son of hers,” Bilbo continued, speaking out of the corner of his mouth as he chewed. “And last week she told me she has another one on the way. Just what we need—more Sackville-Bagginses.”

Just then there was a loud tap on the window, and Bilbo’s jam-covered spoon went rattling onto the table as he discovered Lobelia herself peeking into the kitchen, almost as if summoned by the sound of her own name. Her layer cake of a hat kissed the top of the window frame as she leaned in, her feet undoubtedly disturbing the flower beds below her.

“I knew you were in there,” she said accusingly before Bilbo snapped the curtains closed over her pert little nose, which seemed in a permanent state of smelling something unpleasant. “You can’t hide from me, Bilbo Baggins!”

Thorin rose from the table with a clatter. Out of the kitchen and into the entrance hall he stormed with his fists by his sides, and when he reached his destination he ripped open the door, thumped onto the porch, and shouted a litany of Khuzdul curses toward the garden, loud enough to cause all of Bagshot Row, and possibly all of Westfarthing, to shatter their teacups.

Bilbo peeked between the curtains to see Lobelia hurrying away from Bag End in a huff, flouncy umbrella wagging over her shoulder. She appeared more appalled by Thorin’s behavior than frightened by it, but as long as it succeeded in shooing her away from the house, Bilbo wasn’t about to be picky.

“I’ve never been more in love with you,” he said when Thorin reentered the kitchen.

Thorin’s face, which had still been molded into a scowl when he first walked in, quickly softened into an affectionate smile as he rejoined Bilbo at the table to resume their breakfast. “I shall have to teach you a few things to say,” he remarked, taking up his fork again.

* * *

They took until luncheon to prepare for the journey, nibbling on fruit and nuts and leftover scones from breakfast between folding clothes and tying bedrolls to packs. Bilbo retrieved Sting from his wooden chest and attached it to his hip. Orcrist, meanwhile, was taken from its usual place on the bench in the entrance hall, beside the cloaks. If Bilbo’s unbreakable habit was always answering the door, Thorin’s was only answering it with a sword close by.

Bilbo opted not to wear a jacket because of the heat, instead dressing only in a light cotton shirt and linen waistcoat. He found it astonishing that Thorin could tolerate such heavy boots in midsummer, being quite thankful for his own bare toes and ankles. The dwarf had adjusted remarkably well to the Shire lifestyle, but his assimilation stopped short at exposing his feet.

The final item Bilbo made certain he had with him before they set out was the gold ring in his pocket, which could prove more useful than even his sword if they were to meet any peril on the road. This of course set him to worrying again.

“Are you certain you wouldn’t rather stay here?” Bilbo asked, pack on his back and walking stick in hand, as Thorin joined him at the open door.

“Why? Do you and Bofur wish to be alone?” Thorin suggested teasingly. “I know you formed a bond with him before me. I shan’t get in the way.”

“Oh, hilarious,” Bilbo responded with a roll of his eyes as he stepped onto the porch. Thorin joined him with a laugh and pulled the door closed behind him.

“Truly, Bilbo,” he said as they made their way down the steps, “as long as I am with you it makes no difference where I am or whether I am moving or standing still.”

This Bilbo could believe, although he wondered at it every day. But Thorin’s heart was one thing. His health was another matter entirely. “But you are feeling well enough?” Bilbo checked as they reached the front fence. “Your breathing is steady? Your foot doesn’t bother you? You had enough to eat? Here, drink some water.”

“Bilbo,” Thorin interrupted with a chuckle, “I am the healthiest I have ever been since the battle. In all regards,” he made sure to add, for, although they didn’t speak much about his sickness in the mountain, and Bilbo’s vocal concerns were always in regards to his physical well-being, he wished to make it clear that those days were behind them.

“Forgive me,” Bilbo said now, glancing at his toes. “It’s just that, now that I have you with me, I don’t want to lose you.”

“You won’t,” Thorin promised, pushing through the gate and holding it open for Bilbo to follow. “Nothing can keep us apart now, I am certain of it.”

“Hm, best not to be _too_ certain, I’ve found,” Bilbo said as they started down the hill. “Fate has rather a cruel sense of humor.”

* * *

Their journey to the borders of the Shire was an easy one. They reached Eastfarthing in one day, cut their way through Maggot Farm without being seen, avoided tripping over the Underfeet’s grey cat as it scurried across their path, traversed the Brandywine, found the other side of the Old Forest without falling into any enchanted streams, and met the Barrow-downs free of fog.

After several days of walking and several nights of whispering to each other from parallel bedrolls that eventually melded into one, Bilbo and Thorin finally passed through the gates of Bree.

It was raining, because it was always raining in Bree.

With the hoods of their cloaks pulled over their heads, they trudged through the muddy streets, weaving between the ungainly Big Folk on their way to the sign of the Prancing Pony, where Bofur had agreed to meet them. Unsurprisingly, he was already drunk.

“The Bagginses!” he exclaimed from the bar when he spotted them enter. He raised his mug in celebration, spilling a portion of its contents in the process. “Or should I say the Oakenshields?” he wondered in a more contemplative tone as they got closer.

“Considering we’re not wed,” Bilbo explained, craning his neck to look up at Bofur where he sat on the high stool, “I think Bilbo and Thorin should do just fine.”

“Not wed?” Bofur cried in horror. “What are you waiting for? We should do it now. Bartender! Marry these two immediately!”

“That won’t be necessary, Bofur,” Bilbo hurried to assure him, feeling with embarrassment that half the eyes in the crowded tavern had settled on them.

Bofur looked utterly disappointed. “Life is short, you know. You never know when a day might be your last.”

“Yes, we are well aware of that,” Thorin responded sharply, and then asked, “Where is the wagon?” He was, as usual, less than amused by Bofur’s behavior and wouldn’t have been surprised if he had left the thing in a ditch somewhere hundreds of miles away.

“It’s parked out back,” Bofur said with a vague gesture. “But surely you don’t want to leave already. It’s nearly dark, and I haven’t slept in a bed in so long I can’t even remember how long it’s been since I’ve slept in a bed. Let’s set out in the morning, eh? And in the meantime, a few drinks.”

“When exactly did ‘the meantime’ begin for you?” Thorin asked wryly.

“Oh, I have missed you, Your Highness,” Bofur said with a heavy slap to Thorin’s back.

“'Your Highness' is my sister-son. As the hobbit who is not my husband has already said, you may call me Thorin.”

Bofur looked at Bilbo with raised eyebrows. “When did you teach this one how to be funny?”

“It’s all part of his training,” Bilbo replied, and Bofur erupted with laughter. When Thorin saw Bilbo turn and smile at him, he couldn’t help but join in with a rumbling laugh of his own.

“That’s the spirit! And now for the spirits!” Bofur declared, before ordering three drinks.

Bilbo and Thorin chose to retire after one pint and a plate of bread and cheese each, ordering a small-sized room and telling Bofur to be ready to leave first thing in the morning. He gave them every assurance and sent them upstairs with an exaggerated wink and a crude gesture.

When they descended the stairs at dawn, they found him waiting for them at a table. Or, more accurately, _under_ a table.

“So much for sleeping in a bed,” Thorin scoffed, staring in disdain at the way Bofur’s mustache fluttered against his top lip with each breath as he snoozed.

“Perhaps we should just leave and let him rest up,” Bilbo suggested. “He’s had a much longer journey than we have up to this point.”

“You’ll hear no argument from me,” said Thorin.

“Although,” Bilbo recalled, “the last time we left him behind in a city of Men, it was attacked by a fire-breathing dragon.”

“I’d say the odds of that happening again are rather slim, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right. Especially since, that time, we were the ones who woke the dragon in the first place.”

“Well,” Thorin ventured, “if we’re being specific, that was you.”

“And the molten gold was you,” Bilbo countered. He laughed to himself. Not even married and already acting like his parents.

“Either way,” said Thorin, “there are hardly any dragons in the Shire, so we can assume all will be well.”

“True,” Bilbo conceded. “We should leave him a note, though.” He managed to catch the attention of the barkeep, who was just opening for the day, and requested that he please pass a quill and parchment over the bar.

He scribbled a message telling Bofur they had left without him, but that he was welcome to follow them to Bag End on his own once he’d sobered up—Bilbo immediately crossed that part out and instead wrote “feeling well enough.” Otherwise they would return the wagon, empty, to the Prancing Pony within a week’s time.

Bilbo signed his name and convinced Thorin to add his own before they replenished their portions for the road and traveled through the back door to where Bofur had said the wagon was parked.

They found it in the corner of a damp yard where several horses were being kept. The wagon—which was fortunately covered, or else all of its cargo would have been soaked from the continuous rain—was pulled by two stocky brown ponies who whinnied as Thorin and Bilbo approached.

Bilbo produced two apples from his pack and fed them while Thorin pulled back the canvas cover and leaned over the wooden sides to check for his belongings.

“Is it all there?” Bilbo wondered as he rewarded each pony with a friendly pat on the snout.

Thorin straightened up. “Indeed, if you can believe it. I hardly can. The mirror is not even shattered.”

“Our luck remains intact, then.”

“I suppose it does. And I also suppose I owe Bofur a thank you,” Thorin admitted.

“Mm. He can be surprisingly reliable, except of course for when he isn’t,” Bilbo quipped. “Shall we head out?”

They sat side by side on the bench at the front of the wagon and took turns manning the reins after each stop. Bilbo was proud to display how much his horsemanship had improved since the start of the quest. He no longer held the reins as if they were a snake threatening to bite him, although Thorin noted privately and with much fondness that they were still a bit high.

Their brief excursion had been enjoyable, but by the time they reached the Brandywine Bridge, they were looking forward to returning home, casting off their days-old traveling clothes, and enjoying a meal and perhaps a nap. All they could see in their near future—and hopefully their distant future as well—was happiness and comfort.

What a perfect time for everything to go horribly wrong.

Just as they were halfway across the river, at the curved bridge’s highest point, the Underfeet’s cat slunk out in front of the wagon. It had been impossible to notice initially, as it was the same shade as the surrounding stone. It hissed in annoyance, spooking the ponies, who reared to avoid it.

“Whoa!” Thorin exclaimed, as much out of surprise as an attempt to settle them down.

It was unsuccessful. The ponies scampered back, back, back, and the wagon swerved in the wrong direction. Thorin lost his grip on the reins as they slipped rearward over the edge of the bridge. There the wagon dangled, its front wheels balanced precariously as the ponies fought to pull forward. Their hooves scraped against the stone and their heads tossed to and fro with screeching whinnies.

“Why doesn’t this accursed bridge have any railings?” Thorin snarled.

“You’re one to talk!” Bilbo shouted in return.

They gripped the bench with white-knuckled fingers as the ponies pulled them forward and rolled them back. Perhaps they should have leapt into the water and swum away before the wagon could fall. Perhaps they should have attempted climbing forward onto the bridge. Perhaps a lot of things, but it all happened far too quickly for any perhapses to enter their minds.

As a consequence of the new angle, all of Thorin’s belongings in the back of the wagon tumbled downwards. Some smaller items plummeted into the water before they heard something shatter.

“The mirror,” Bilbo said under his breath.

Just then the traces snapped, releasing both ponies and sending them galloping the length of the bridge to safety. The wagon and everything—and every _one_ —in it didn’t fare as well. They promptly plunged into the river with a tremendous splash. On the way down, Thorin and Bilbo toppled uncontrollably out of their seats and into the back, where they were jostled around with the chests of clothes and dwarvish tomes.

Within seconds, the wagon was inundated with water and sank rapidly deeper into the river. The cover imploded from the force of the impact, making it difficult for Bilbo and Thorin to push it away and free themselves. Their eyes stung to see and their cheeks puffed out as they held their breath.

At last, they managed to wriggle out through a narrow opening between the canvas and the wood, but it was too late. The wagon had sunk too deep for them to swim to the surface, and the sunshine remained a distant rippling blur above them. They’d used up their energy, and the urge to breathe became too strong as they took in gulps of water.

The last thing either of them remembered was the sight of the other one stretching a hand through the murky blue water.

And then everything went dark.

Well, that was inconvenient.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two Halloweens ago I was watching Beetlejuice and posted on Tumblr about wanting a Bagginshield AU. A year and a half later, I'm finally writing it. Don't let your dreams be dreams, my friends.
> 
> If you're wondering, the title of the fic comes from a line of dialogue in the movie.
> 
> Also, shout-out to [fargreencountryswiftsunrise](http://fargreencountryswiftsunrise.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr for all those months ago suggesting the character to fill Beetlejuice's shoes. I loved it, and I never forgot.
> 
> Thanks for reading! I'm really excited to show you more, and I'd love to know what you think. I'm also on [Tumblr](http://myrtlebroadbelt.tumblr.com).


	2. Death

When Bilbo and Thorin entered the parlor, dripping water onto the tile and leaving wet foot and boot prints everywhere they stepped, there was already a fire crackling in the hearth. They were so desperate to dry off that they didn’t even wonder when or by whom the fire was lit—or why, considering it was summer.

“So much for luck,” Bilbo remarked with annoyance, kneeling on the edge of the carpet before the fireplace.

“At least we made it home,” Thorin responded, joining him.

They stretched their pruny fingers towards the fire, eager to warm themselves up. How they could still feel so cold was a mystery considering they had walked all the way back from the bridge in the hot sun.

Walked back from the bridge. _Did_ they walk back from the bridge? Surely they must have, for how else would they have ended up here, in Bag End? It was several miles from the Brandywine to Hobbiton. They would have certainly dried off in the warm air before they even crossed into Westfarthing. Yet why were they still so soaking wet? And why couldn’t Thorin recall a single moment of time spent traveling between the two locations?

He was just about to mention this to Bilbo when he was interrupted by a surprised yelp. Thorin turned just in time to see the fire licking Bilbo’s fingers. The hobbit snapped his hands back and placed them in his lap, brow furrowed less in pain and more in bewilderment.

“Very strange,” he muttered.

“Bilbo…” Thorin said uneasily beside him.

“What is it?” he asked, and in response Thorin reached down, grabbed Bilbo’s hand by the wrist, and brought it up in front of his face. The index and middle finger were steadily ignited as if two invisible wicks had sprouted from them.

Bilbo gasped, eyes wide, and swiftly blew out the flames with a frantic breath. The result was very unusual. His fingertips were not charred or irritated as one would have expected. There was simply a thin trickle of smoke from the pad of each finger as the flames were extinguished, and then they quickly returned to normal. Except this clearly wasn’t normal at all. Bilbo glanced with raised eyebrows at Thorin, who returned an almost identical expression.

Slowly, Bilbo stood, rubbing his fingers against his thumb and clearing his throat. “Well,” he said, “I suppose we should have something to eat.” Perhaps it was just hunger that had them feeling so out of sorts. As his father had taught him as a boy, food was a good enough solution to most every problem. Although he didn’t imagine Bungo Baggins had ever been in a situation quite like this.

“Just a moment, Bilbo.” As the hobbit moved into the kitchen, Thorin scrambled to follow him and took the opportunity to ask the question he had been meaning to ask a moment ago: “Do you recall how we arrived here from the river? I cannot remember any of it. Can you? Bilbo?”

Bilbo wasn’t listening to him, distracted as he suddenly was with rummaging through his pockets. “My ring,” he muttered, and his stomach lurched with the realization. “I’ve lost it. It must have fallen out of my pocket in the river. I’m going back.”

With Thorin still on his heels, Bilbo hurried through the parlor and jerked open the front door. Then without a second thought as to the time of day or distance to the river or how he planned to search it, he darted down the front steps.

“Wait, Bilbo, I think we should...” Thorin cut himself off for the simple fact that, as soon as Bilbo left the first step, he disappeared. Considering he had rushed out the door in the first place because his magic ring—of which Thorin was aware, although he disliked the way he often caught Bilbo looking at it—was missing, it seemed safe to say this vanishing was caused by a different kind of magic entirely.

No one understood this more than Bilbo, who found himself in a state that was nothing like what he experienced when he donned his ring. At least then there was some indication that he was in the same space as before, blurred and disorienting as it was. In contrast, now, as he assessed his new surroundings, everything was clear, and yet nothing was.

This place was unlike any he had ever visited. There were no trees or flowers, not even hills or mountains, and certainly no buildings or bridges. Although the landscape obviously stretched for miles beyond his vision, he sensed that he could search and search and never meet another living thing. All he could see wherever he turned was sand, a flat plane of yellow until it met the horizon and turned abruptly to blue. There was no sound but that of a distant ticking clock whose second hand seemed to be moving too quickly.

Immediately forgetting his desperation to find his ring in favor of a new desperation to return to Bag End, Bilbo turned around hoping to find the front steps there waiting for him. Instead there was only more sand. This time, however, the ground seemed to be swelling as if to make room for something large that was attempting to emerge. It reminded Bilbo of the way the coins in Erebor shifted as Smaug rose from his slumber. He hoped that was not what was about to greet him, although he found it difficult to imagine anything pleasant surfacing from this landscape.

Indeed, he soon glimpsed, out of the sand and far too close for comfort, the faceless head of a hideous serpentine creature whose mouth looked like a giant grasping claw. Rows and rows of jagged teeth peeked out as it coughed up sand like yellow vomit. It wasn’t Smaug, but it was just as familiar.

“Were-worms,” Bilbo whispered.

The worm made a horrible groaning sound like an enormous pig being slaughtered and menacingly wagged its head—if you could even call it that. Before Bilbo had a chance to decide what to do, he felt a tug on his collar as if someone were pulling him upwards. A second later, he found himself standing once again with Thorin in the doorway to Bag End.

“Thorin, you saved my life. I was—”

“Two hours,” Thorin interrupted, urging Bilbo into the entrance hall and shutting the door.

“Pardon?”

“Two hours. That’s how long you were gone.”

“Two hours?” Bilbo shook his head. “No, that can’t be. It was only a moment, and then you pulled me back.”

Thorin took Bilbo by the arm and guided him into the parlor. He nodded to the window. Night had fallen outside—that is, the outside that was meant to be there, not the one Bilbo had wandered into.

“Two hours,” Bilbo repeated under his breath.

“I must show you something,” Thorin told him. “Come with me.”

He led Bilbo down the hall and into the bedroom, where they stood in front of the full-length mirror that leaned against the wall beside the wardrobe. It looked as it always did, except for the slight difference that this time neither of them were reflected in it. It was as if no one was in the room.

To further prove his point, Thorin retrieved a pine cone from a basket by the fireplace and moved it horizontally from one side of the mirror to the other, bouncing it up and down like a trotting horse. In the image of the glass, it appeared to float in midair.

Bilbo, letting out a series of flustered half-sentences, peeked around to the back of the mirror, adjusted its position, and waved his hand in front of it several times, to no avail.

“And then there is this,” Thorin continued, moving to the bedside table. He picked up a brown leather-bound book with gold engraving and handed it to Bilbo.

“ _Instructions for the Newly Expired_ ,” he read aloud from the cover, and looked at Thorin with a puzzled expression.

“Is this your book?” asked Thorin.

Bilbo shook his head. “I have never seen this book in my life.”

With a sigh and a hand across his face, Thorin sat on the edge of the bed. “Then it is as I feared.”

Bilbo did not understand their situation well enough yet to despair. “Where did this come from?” he wondered, holding the book up. “This must be someone’s very elaborate practical joke. Perhaps Gandalf is in the Shire and he’s trying to spook us. Yes, that must be it. Don’t you think? Thorin?”

Thorin looked at him with a sober expression. “Bilbo,” he said carefully, and then didn’t continue.

Bilbo stood staring at him expectantly. “What?”

Thorin searched for a delicate way to express what he was thinking. “I don’t think we survived the river.”

Bilbo opened his mouth as if to say something, but closed it just as quickly. He swallowed on a dry throat and moved to sit next to Thorin, still gripping the newfound book with both hands. They both stared silently ahead of them at the reflection of an empty bed and let Thorin’s conclusion wash over them.

Death.

Well, that would certainly explain a few things.

* * *

They sat up in bed all night together looking through the book, reading various passages aloud to each other and asking questions to thin air that received no answer.

“How can we be in two places at once?” Thorin wondered. “At the bottom of that river but also here, in Bag End? And why did you disappear when you stepped outside?”

“This is even more complicated than my contract for the quest,” Bilbo remarked, flipping pages in frustration. “Listen to this. A chapter titled ‘Geographical and Temporal Perimeters.’ First sentence reads, ‘Functional perimeters vary from manifestation to manifestation.’ Very helpful.”

“Have you checked for an author?” asked Thorin, tilting the book to examine the spine. “I am beginning to think this is Balin’s doing.”

They laughed softly at that, but it turned sour when they began to consider just how pleased they would be to see Balin at this moment. To see anyone, really, if at the very least their own reflections.

“If we’re dead,” Bilbo posed to break the silence, “then why are we here, in Bag End? Is this even the real Bag End? What I saw outside was _not_ the Shire. It was about as far from it as one could get. And anyway, shouldn’t we be... somewhere else? An afterlife, I mean.”

Thorin hummed. “Dwarves believe that when we die, we go to the halls of Mahal, our Maker, and are reunited with the spirits of our lost kin. But perhaps that is not so. Where do hobbits go?”

“No one has ever been quite certain. It is believed by many that we are related to the Big Folk, and therefore we go to the same place as them, although the proudest among us object to such an idea. I’ve never considered it much, except for a brief while after my parents died.”

“So if these beliefs were true,” Thorin concluded, “if you went with Men and I with Dwarves, then we would be separated.”

Bilbo nodded. “Yes. I suppose so.”

“We should be grateful, then.” Thorin reached between them to where Bilbo’s hand rested on the blanket, and took it within his own. “That we are together, even in death.”

Bilbo smiled gently and rested his head against Thorin’s shoulder. “I just wish we knew for how long.”

* * *

Time became unpredictable. Several days could feel as long as one, and one day could feel as long as several. Seemingly overnight, the food rotted in the pantry, the flowers wilted in their vases, and dust accumulated on every surface faster than they could brush it away. They felt a permanent chill which could be cured by neither blanket nor fire nor closeness of body—or rather, of spirit.

There was also the issue of clothing. Specifically, that they were trapped in what they were wearing when they died. They would attempt a change of clothes, but as soon as they took one step away from the wardrobe, they would find themselves back in their old garments, the new ones having been mysteriously returned to their original places. This agitated Bilbo in particular, as he had hoped to spend the rest of eternity in something better than wrinkled traveling attire.

One small mercy was that the garden remained vibrant and well-kept. They couldn’t be sure whether this was because the gardener had been tending it when they weren’t paying attention, or if whoever or whatever put them in this situation simply took pity on them. Either way, it was a singular sign of life for which they were thankful, although they noted the irony that they could only enjoy it through a pane of glass.

When it came to finding an explanation for all of this, they had about as much luck as they did on that bridge. They read and reread the instructions every day, but the book seemed to always be slightly different each time they opened it, and they could usually make neither head nor tail of it in any form. Even when they could, it was never anything particularly useful.

They sat in the spare room one afternoon, Bilbo in his chair with his legs swung over the side, and Thorin hunched over his work table. Bilbo was growing increasingly restless.

“Where are all the other dead people?” he grumbled. “Why is it just the two of us?”

Thorin looked up from the candlestick he was polishing. It didn’t need to be polished, but he’d already polished every candlestick in the house two times each, and he had run out of things to do, so he was polishing it a third time. “Perhaps this is a reward,” he suggested lovingly.

“More like a punishment,” Bilbo replied, and saved Thorin’s pride by adding, “There’s nothing to eat.”

“Are you hungry?” Thorin asked.

“No,” Bilbo admitted. “It’s terrifying. I’ve never not been hungry before.”

As Thorin was chuckling over that, his attention was drawn to the small semi-circular window, through which he could see something moving on the road outside. He stood and hurried over. “It’s Bofur,” he said.

“Bofur? Is it really?” Bilbo moved to join him. They could see Bofur standing just beyond the fence. “He must have seen our note.”

Without thinking, Thorin opened the window and leaned out. “Bofur!” he shouted, waving a hand. “Over here! Bofur!”

Bofur ignored him, only stood staring up at the front door. He removed his hat, pressed it against his chest, and bowed his head in respect. He appeared to wipe away a tear.

“He can’t see us,” Bilbo sighed, returning to his chair.

“No,” Thorin confirmed. He watched Bofur replace his hat, nod to himself with a twitch of his mustache, and begin the slow walk back down the road.

“No more use for that ring of mine anyway, it would seem,” Bilbo muttered as he thumbed through the book in his lap to find the appropriate page. “Ah, here.” He read a passage aloud: “‘The living believe they will never die, so they refuse to see the dead.’”

“Believe they will never die,” repeated Thorin, wryly. “That certainly sounds like Bofur.”

His cutting tone disguised the pang of regret he felt in his chest when he saw his fellow dwarf disappear completely beyond the edge of the hill. He had never properly thanked him, and now he would never get another chance.

“If Bofur is outside,” Bilbo posited, “then that must mean this really is Bag End, wouldn’t you say? Unless he’s an illusion too. To be honest, I’m still not convinced this isn’t just one long terrible dream from which we are slow to wake.”

“If it is real, then I suppose Bofur shall inform Erebor of our passing,” Thorin suggested, returning to the table. Then, having paused his polishing for a thoughtful moment, he wondered, “Do you think we had a funeral?”

“ _We_ didn’t,” Bilbo clarified. “‘Funerals are for the living,’ after all, as the book tells us.” He scoffed. “I’m beginning to think the entire point of this is to tell us, in the most verbose manner possible, that we have absolutely no control over anything anymore.”

“Well then,” Thorin said, setting down his polishing cloth and moving to continue his work on the map frame, “I suppose there’s no use in worrying, is there?”

If only that were true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! As always, I'd love to know what you think.


	3. Inheritance

Sleep was not necessary for the dead, as far as Thorin and Bilbo could tell, but they did it anyway, partly to maintain some semblance of a routine, and partly because being trapped under a hill, no matter how content they were in each other’s company, had the tendency to become quite boring.

Sometimes, when they slept, they would dream. Some dreams were pleasant, a welcome escape from the monotony and entrapment they felt in their day-to-day life—or rather, death. Other dreams were less enjoyable. Many nights found Thorin waking with a start after a particularly realistic battle flashback, or Bilbo crying out in a garbled voice as he relived their drowning.

One dream, dreamt only by Bilbo, was especially vivid, and especially terrifying. It involved the door to Bag End being barreled down by the force of an enormous green umbrella, and the Sackville-Bagginses invading the place like an insect infestation, cramming furniture into every available space and leaving Bilbo and Thorin trapped in a corner behind a pottery cabinet, with Lobelia’s malicious laughter haunting them for all eternity.

Bilbo’s eyes burst open with a realization. He had only just registered that he was floating in thin air—having rolled off the bed in the night and been forgotten by gravity—when he found himself falling in a heap on the floor. His alarmed shout woke Thorin, who sat up in bed and glanced about in confusion until Bilbo’s face appeared over the edge of the mattress.

“Thorin!” he said desperately. “S-Sackville-Bagginses!”

Thorin shook his head, not comprehending. “What about them?”

Bilbo struggled to express himself through his fog of dread. “Inherited the house. We died. The house. Sackville-Bagginses.”

“Are you saying that the Sackville-Bagginses will be moving in here?”

Bilbo nodded violently.

Before Thorin could respond, they heard the door to Bag End creak open. The sound seemed to be magnified to reach their ears with maximum ominousness. They could hear chatter outside, the likes of which they hadn’t heard in what felt like months. Or was it days?

“Oh no,” Bilbo moaned. “It’s happening already.”

He picked himself up off the floor. Thorin scrambled from beneath the sheets. Out of the bedroom they crept until they reached the end of the hall, where they peeked timidly around the corner, having not yet grown accustomed to their invisibility—in Bilbo’s case, the permanent kind. What they discovered when they looked towards the door caused them even more distress than discovering they were dead.

There, assessing the entrance hall with a mixture of contempt and triumph, was Lobelia Sackville-Baggins. She appeared to be wearing an entire floral arrangement on her head, with long stems poking out haphazardly. She placed her collapsed umbrella—as green as it was in Bilbo’s vision, although not nearly as large—on the bench against the wall.

“No umbrella stand,” she noted with a disapproving click of her tongue.

Just then her husband Otho—a gentleman whose style of hair was eerily similar to his wife’s, and who was wearing far too much brocade for one individual—entered with a stack of hatboxes balanced precariously in his arms. It was nearly twice his height, and he had to bend significantly at the knees to fit through the door.

“I can’t believe we had to wait two months before we could move in,” she complained. “They’re dead. What use is all of this to them?”

“Well, remember, dear,” Otho said as he set down the boxes and removed his stiff-brimmed hat to wipe his brow, “they were missing a month before the bodies were found.”

This was news to the dead people listening from down the hall.

“Whether they were dead or they ran off to live with the rest of those filthy dwarves,” Lobelia objected, “it made no difference. The house was ours. As it should have been the last time, I might add.”

“Yes, dear,” Otho conceded in a tone of voice that suggested this was how most of their conversations ended. He exited the house to retrieve more boxes. Lobelia, meanwhile, slunk into the parlor to assess the rest of her spoils.

Crossing paths with Otho on the porch were two hobbits in modest work clothes carrying a sofa so smothered in ruffles it looked impossible to sit on. They placed it not far from the door and, after exchanging a silent look that seemed to confirm their shared opinion that they would not be receiving the tips they deserved for this job, stepped back outside.

From behind the sofa, wearing a sullen expression, emerged a hobbit lad just barely in his tweens. He was dressed all in black, from his trousers to his waistcoat to his messily tied cravat, only a few shades darker than the mop of loose ringlets atop his head. The hue sat in stark contrast to his alabaster complexion. However, his striking blue eyes, seeming to glow from beneath dark lashes, belied whatever morose persona he was attempting to project through his dress.

“Frodo,” Bilbo said under his breath.

“You know that child?” Thorin wondered.

“Frodo Baggins, my cousins’ son,” Bilbo said in an instinctive whisper. “His parents died several years ago. Drowned in the Brandywine, in fact, same as us. Last I heard, he was living at Brandy Hall. Having quite a miserable time of it, I’m told. Although not as miserable a time as he’s having now, to be sure. To think, when Lobelia said she had another child on the way, she meant this.”

Just then, Frodo, who had been busy examining Bilbo’s collection of walking sticks, turned to look suspiciously down the hall. Thorin and Bilbo immediately ducked out of sight.

“Did he see us?” Thorin hissed as they pressed themselves against the wall.

“He couldn’t have, could he?” Bilbo replied. “The book says they can’t.”

They heard Otho’s voice around the corner. “Well, Frodo, what do you think?”

“Will I have my own bedroom?” Frodo asked, sounding just as glum as he looked, although the youthful timbre in his voice suggested that he was perfectly capable of cheerfulness, if only he had reason for it.

“Yes, I believe so,” Otho replied.

“Can I paint the walls black?”

“Well, er, we’ll have to ask your mother about that.”

“She’s not my mother,” Frodo reminded him firmly.

“Right,” said Otho nervously. “Well, why don’t you go grab some of your things from the wagon? There’s a good lad.”

Bilbo and Thorin turned in time to see Frodo walking towards the door just as Otho dropped a crate full of what looked to be at least a dozen delicately painted teacups onto the cushion of the sofa. The porcelain rattled loudly, and he winced as he examined them for damage.

Meeting Frodo in the doorway was a rotund, pimply-faced lad a few years older than him, dressed in a far-too-small jacket that threatened to burst at every seam.

“Lotho,” Bilbo whispered with disdain.

Lotho stared Frodo down as they passed each other, an action which was made rather difficult by Lotho’s impressive girth. “I’m taking the bigger room,” the older boy demanded.

“Obviously,” Frodo remarked dryly, looking Lotho up and down before sauntering down the steps.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Lotho called after him. “Father, what did he mean?”

Otho, who was busy pocketing a chipped teacup from the crate, turned to face his son. “Hmm? Oh, he just means that you’re older, Lotho. Nothing to be upset about.”

Lobelia emerged through the parlor then. “Lotho, my darling boy!” she said in an amiable tone of voice reserved only for her son, placing one hand on either side of his plump face before planting a loud kiss on his forehead. “Come look at the place with me while the rest of the things are brought in. You absolutely _must_ see the spoons.”

Bilbo buried his face in his hands. “I would let two dozen dwarves raid my pantry in place of this. _Three_ dozen, even. Is this some sort of punishment for something?”

“You did nothing in life deserving of punishment, _ghivashel_ ,” Thorin was quick to assure him.

“I’ve found the treasure!” Lobelia practically sang from the other room. Bilbo gave Thorin a look.

“I have an idea,” Thorin told him then.

“It’s not molten gold again, is it?”

“No, nothing like that. But that book has a word for those in our circumstance. Do you recall?”

Bilbo glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, wondering what he was trying to say. “Dead? Miserable? Helpless?” Then all at once it dawned on him. “Ghosts!”

* * *

They couldn’t feel pain, as they’d first learned from Bilbo’s incident with the fire, and from all the times Thorin had bumped his head against various doorways with hardly a blink of recognition. (It turned out they couldn’t feel much pleasure either, although not for lack of trying.) They had also discovered, through Bilbo losing his smallest toe on the wrong end of an errant knife in the kitchen, that their bodies—or whatever you might call them—could make quick and miraculous recoveries.

This physical numbness had caused a mental numbness to match, as it made them feel as if they didn't exist. But now that they had discovered their home invaded by unwanted visitors, it could prove very useful.

They started in the master bedroom. Lobelia and Lotho barged in ready to judge the space. Lobelia made a disgusted sound. “Didn’t even bother to make the bed before they died. No matter, we’ll be removing the sheets anyway. Or burning them, more like.”

“Why do we have to burn them, Mother?” Lotho asked.

“I’ll tell you when you’re older. Now, let’s have a look in here, shall we?”

With that she swung the wardrobe door open and let out a blood-curdling shriek. There, hanging by the neck from a rope between his own best waistcoats, was Bilbo Baggins. He did his best impression of a corpse, tongue lolling out of the corner of his mouth, eyes rolled back into his head. To really sell it, he grabbed his own nose and, with all his might, ripped the skin of his face away from his skull, making for an absolutely grotesque sight.

However, Lobelia was screaming for a very different reason. “It’s offensively small. And ugh, those textiles!” She shoved a row of corduroy jackets roughly to one side, taking Bilbo with them. “Dreadful,” she said, and shut the door in his skinless face.

The bathroom was next. Inside, Thorin was lying face down and fully clothed in the claw-footed tub. The water overflowed onto the brown tiled floor as he floated lifeless in its depth.

Lobelia paid him as much mind as she did Bilbo. “Oh goodness, the bathtub is leaking,” she gasped. “We shall have to get that fixed. I think I’ll have Frodo clean the floor. He gave me nothing but grief on the way here.”

“I hate him, Mother,” Lotho whined. “He tells the most dreadful stories. Why must he live with us?”

“I know, dear, but it’s too late to get rid of him now. How would it look?”

As mother and son moved through the hallway critiquing every painting and map lining the walls, Bilbo and Thorin regrouped to discuss their next step.

“They can’t see us. It’s no use,” said Bilbo.

“We shall just have to think bigger,” Thorin insisted. He pondered this for a moment, then practically lit up with inspiration. “Cut off my head.”

“What?!” Bilbo cried.

“Bilbo, I am already dead. What is the worst that could happen?”

“You could get… deader,” Bilbo posited.

“I won’t. I promise you.” As Lobelia and Lotho got closer, Thorin searched about for the proper utensil. Since Sting and Orcrist had been lost in the river, they settled for a spare axe Thorin had brought with him from Erebor.

Thorin knelt and rested his head on the wooden chest outside the study. After several assurances that it was absolutely fine and not to worry, Bilbo gathered every drop of his courage and, with his eyes closed, swung the axe down hard.

There was nary a notch in the chest as, with a dull thud, Thorin’s head fell to the floor beside his own booted feet. Bilbo quickly crouched, pushing the dwarf’s unruly hair aside to reveal a smirking face. “Well done, Master Baggins,” he said.

Bilbo’s sigh of relief morphed into a laugh as he lifted Thorin’s head with both hands and kissed him on the mouth. He could say with total confidence it was the strangest thing he’d ever done, but somehow in the moment it seemed perfectly normal. He’d been at this death thing too long already, it would seem.

By the time Lobelia opened the study door, still rambling about whatever object or cobweb had so offended her this time, Bilbo and Thorin—both parts of him—were already inside. The body lay unmoving on the floor as Bilbo held his head aloft by a fistful of hair and displayed the most murderous face he could conjure.

Instead of running away in terror, Lobelia simply seemed annoyed. Bilbo and Thorin quickly realized it was because of who sat at Bilbo’s writing desk behind them, whom they had not noticed in their rush to pose as menacingly as possible.

“Otho,” Lobelia admonished, staring directly through the two ghosts in front of her, “you’re supposed to be bringing things into the house.”

Otho jumped and nearly dropped the book he was perusing. “Yes, terribly sorry, dear. I was only…”

He didn’t have time to make up an excuse before Lobelia was back to scolding him. “Honestly, Otho, how are we to get anything done around here with you lazing about? And don’t get too attached to those books. They’re all going. That wardrobe was made for ants. I’ll have to store my hats here.”

Upon hearing this, Bilbo lost his grip on Thorin’s hair, and his head went tumbling to the floor to join his body. “Listen here, Lobelia Sackville-Baggins,” he snapped with a pointing finger. But of course she couldn’t hear him and simply turned to leave.

“Let’s have a look at the spare room, Lotho,” she said as they walked away.

On the carpet, Thorin’s head started to speak. “The book is in there, Bilbo. I must lock the door.”

And so without even thinking to put himself back together, Thorin’s body picked itself up and ran down the hall, past Lobelia and Lotho, and, after a brief collision with the wall, into the spare room.

“I felt a breeze, Mother,” said Lotho.

“Button your jacket, dear,” Lobelia suggested, apparently forgetting just how impossible that was. “Now, let’s decide whose room this will be.”

Just as they reached the door, Thorin slammed it shut. Despite having no idea that anything but nature had done it, Lobelia seemed incredibly insulted. She tried the knob, to no avail. “Well, now I must find the key.”

“Don’t make me share a room with Frodo, Mother!” Lotho pleaded.

“Don’t fret, my peach,” Lobelia told him, and with that they moved away from the door.

Once they were out of earshot, Thorin made his careful, headless way back to the study, where he had already spent the past few moments watching from the floor as Bilbo waved his hands in front of Otho Sackville-Baggins’ face and ordered him to put down his book.

“What is the use of being a ghost if you can’t frighten people away?” he groaned.

Thorin’s body bent over and, after feeling about blindly for a moment, picked up his head. “I thought for certain this would work,” he said as he reattached it to his neck. With a few minor adjustments, he was as good as new. Or at least, as new as a dead dwarf could be.

They wandered into the parlor, which had been overtaken by a crowd of obnoxious furniture. Bilbo’s armchair had become home to a pile of frocks in every color, and his parents’ portraits had been knocked off the wall to make room for an enormous painting of the Sackville-Baggins family on the mantel.

Bilbo stood in speechless horror at the unwelcome items surrounding him—a contrast to the emptiness he found when he returned home from his adventure, although no less gut-wrenching.

“Thorin…” he began, not entirely sure what to say next. But Thorin was over by the window watching with quiet fury as Lobelia informed the movers that it was perfectly fine to drop those dining chairs on the geraniums, because apparently they would be digging them up anyway.

“Lotho will be growing his pipe-weed there, won’t you, Lotho?” she was saying proudly. “He has his own little business selling it at the market. Such an industrious young man, my Lotho. Of course, I don’t smoke the stuff. It’s very unbefitting a lady. But I’m told it’s of the highest quality.”

Thorin was very sensitive where the garden was concerned, considering it was one of the few real-world pleasures they could still enjoy through their death. He couldn’t stop himself from storming towards the door intending to give Lobelia a piece of his mind, whether she could see him or not. Unfortunately, in the midst of his anger, he was forgetting what happened to Bilbo when he attempted to leave the house.

“Thorin!” Bilbo warned, running after him. “Wait, you don’t know what’s out there!”

But it was too late. Thorin’s boots were already sinking into sickly yellow sand. He whipped his head frantically to and fro, nearly slapping himself in the face with his own braids. Panic filled him as he realized what had happened.

“What have I done?” he cursed himself before calling Bilbo’s name over and over again into the vast silence.

“Thorin!” he heard behind him, and turned to see Bilbo running toward him. He caught the hobbit in a tight embrace.

“Bilbo, I thought I’d lost you!”

“Come, we have to get back inside,” Bilbo told him.

That’s when Thorin saw the door. It was hovering in midair in the distance, hanging open against the cloudless blue sky to reveal the entrance hall beyond. They started for it, only to be shocked into stillness by the sudden appearance of a were-worm. It reared its ugly head at them with an earth-shaking growl and then lurched forward.

Bilbo had no idea what got into him, but he found himself swatting the creature with the flat of his hand. The worm paused, stunned, before letting out an even louder, more agitated sound.

Thorin and Bilbo set off in the direction of Bag End—or at least, what they could see of it, which was good enough for them. They climbed the newly visible front steps and shut the door behind them, just barely outrunning the snap of the worm’s jaws.

As they caught their breath in the entrance hall, their arms found their way around each other again, terrified as they were of being separated.

“We’re trapped in this house,” Bilbo mumbled into Thorin’s shoulder, “and it isn’t even our own anymore.”

Thorin couldn’t find any comforting words in his vocabulary to properly respond, so he simply pressed a silent kiss against the side of Bilbo’s head.

They clung to each other like that, there beside the door, until it was opened roughly by Lobelia, who pushed her way inside and demanded to know who had closed it.

Perhaps this was a punishment after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun facts time! Catherine O'Hara's Beetlejuice character is named Delia. Pretty close to Lobelia. And the interior decorator character is named Otho. So what I'm saying is, this was meant to be.
> 
> The timeline has been compressed here. Frodo and Lotho wouldn't have even been born at the time this takes place, but shh, we'll just ignore that.
> 
> Thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought.


	4. Disappearance

“It all goes to auction,” Lobelia declared at supper.

Frodo sat poking at the half-raw chicken on his plate as she prattled on. His appetite hadn’t lived up to hobbit standards in recent years, and Lobelia’s cooking was hardly helping. The worst part of it was that she fancied herself excellent at it, no matter how many times Frodo informed her otherwise. He didn’t have much support from the other members of the household.

“This is absolutely delicious, dear,” Otho had offered after his first bite, and Frodo had rolled his eyes.

“Well,” Lobelia had said, “thank goodness we cleaned out that repulsive pantry.”

 _We_ was an interesting choice of word, considering all she had done was screech at other people to empty it. Then she had screeched at them to go to the market to fetch the fresh stuff, all while she scurried from room to room holding up various samples of obnoxiously floral wallpaper, with Lotho never far behind praising her taste.

“I think we should keep the place the way it is,” Frodo said now as Lobelia started up with a discussion of whether pink or yellow pillows—or both—would look best on the sofa.

She raised a snooty eyebrow at him. “Oh, is that so? Because Otho tells me you asked him about painting your room dark, and let me tell you—”

Frodo interrupted her with a world-weary sigh. “My entire life is a dark enough room already.”

“Mother, _please_!” Lotho whined. “Make him sleep in the parlor! He isn’t even part of this family!”

“Thank goodness,” mumbled Frodo.

“I’m sorry, my darling, but until we find the key for the spare room, you simply must share. Otho, you are looking for that key, are you not?”

Otho looked up from rearranging the food on his plate. “Hmm? Oh yes, of course. But you know, dear, perhaps Frodo is right.”

The look Lobelia gave him could properly cook her chicken.

Otho cleared his throat. “I just mean, perhaps we could keep some things as they are. Like the study, for instance. There are some very interesting items in there. Books and maps and such. I’d quite like to examine them more closely.”

Lobelia didn’t say a single word in response, simply continued glaring at him, that dreadful eyebrow of hers inching higher and higher on her forehead as she did so.

“Or not,” Otho yielded, returning his attention to his plate.

They finished the meal having heard about at least five different varieties of flower Lobelia wanted to have on the parlor carpet. Anyone who discovered the chicken hiding beneath the potatoes on three out of four plates wouldn’t have been able to determine if it was shoved there for tasting terrible or if it crawled there on its own to escape the conversation.

Later in the evening, Frodo and Lotho lay on opposite beds in the guest room. Frodo was on his back staring at the ceiling, mostly so he didn’t have to stare at Lotho picking at his face. The space was taken up mostly by Lotho's things, not that Frodo had much of his own anyway. Well, save for one thing.

“This is _my_ room,” Lotho reminded him as he moved from picking at his chin to picking at his forehead, “so don’t get too comfortable."

“Oh, never fear,” Frodo assured him coolly. “You won’t be seeing me here for long.”

Lotho scrunched up his face. “You’re going to sleep in the parlor like I said?”

“No. I think I’ll just disappear.”

“I wish you would. I wish you had never joined this family. My mother didn’t even want to take you in. She only did it so Bilbo would give her Bag End. But Bilbo’s dead now, so we never needed you in the first place.”

While Lotho was blathering on, Frodo removed one hand from behind his head and reached into his trouser pocket. He waited until he was certain Lotho was watching him, and then in a second he vanished, leaving behind what appeared to be an empty bed. Lotho let out a tremendous scream that sent his mother running to check on him.

“Mother!” Lotho shouted, pointing to the bed. “Mother, he disappeared!”

“Who did, my darling?”

“Frodo!”

“Oh, did he? Well, good riddance, then. Now you have the room to yourself.”

“No, I mean he _disappeared_. He was right there, and then he wasn’t.”

“Oh, my sweet,” Lobelia cooed, kissing him triply on the head. “It’s been such a long day for you. So much change and noise and movement. Let’s get you ready for bed.”

“But Mother—”

Lotho’s voice faded as Frodo crept invisibly out of the room, down the hall, and out the back door. He unbuttoned his waistcoat against the warm air of late summer and set out for where the hill was least steep. He climbed to the top and, when he was seated comfortably in the grass with his back nestled into a curve in the trunk of the oak tree, removed the simple gold ring from his finger. He smirked to himself as he placed it securely back in his pocket.

He had found it on the riverbank. It had fallen out of Bilbo’s pocket as they pulled him out, and Frodo had spotted it from his hiding place between the trees. It had glistened golden in the muddy grass, reflecting the sunlight and blinding him with its radiance. No one else had noticed it, but he had. He had sneaked out when no one was looking and snatched it up. Instinctively, he had put it on, and he had discovered that it made everyone else stare right through him.

That’s how he had gotten a good look at the bodies.

Their skin was green. Was his parents’ skin green? They hadn’t allowed him to see. That’s why he had come to the river in the first place, this time. To see.

He was still living in Brandy Hall then, and word had arrived that a book of what looked to be Dwarvish runes had been plucked from the water by a fisherman. Folk were on their way out to search for the bodies. He’d already heard that Bilbo was missing. Bilbo and his dwarf. He was a king once. Or almost a king. So some said, and so more disbelieved. But Frodo believed. Frodo believed in most things.

For instance, he believed, as he sat now smoking his father’s pipe and gazing up at the stars through the spaces between the oak leaves, that one day he wouldn’t feel quite so lonely.

* * *

The auction was held at the end of the week. Furniture and mathoms covered the front garden, and a crowd gathered outside the fence to place their bids. Lobelia spent the morning shouting orders at the movers, who were far less careful in their handling of the items after the way she had treated them days before. At one point a grandfather clock smashed through the kitchen window and nearly put out Otho’s eye as he was pouring tea. The weight of Lobelia’s hat seemed to be the only thing keeping her from losing her head.

While Lotho was permitted to sit on the front bench enjoying his elevenses and watching the proceedings without participation, Frodo was expected to assist the attending hobbits with their full barrows and unwieldy handfuls. One gentleman asked him to carry a chandelier while he himself handled an end table. Frodo fumbled not to tangle the chains as they made their way down the hill.

“Are you in mourning, lad?” the hobbit asked, nodding to Frodo’s clothes.

“Yes,” he answered. Always.

The hobbit began with his condolences and his relatable anecdotes, but Frodo didn’t hear them, focused as he suddenly was by something he spotted in the window of the spare room. It nearly caused him to trip over his own feet, and he paused his walking to get a better look.

There were faces there. Any faces would have been surprising to see there in the first place, considering no one could get into the spare room. But these faces were surprising for an entirely different reason.

It was them. Bilbo and his dwarf king. They had been green and lifeless on the riverbank a month ago, and yet now here they were looking alive as ever and peering out at him with sad eyes. They looked at him as if he wasn’t looking back, as if they assumed he couldn’t see them, the same as he looked at everyone else when he wore his ring.

“There’s something rattling around in here,” said the hobbit with the table, pulling Frodo’s attention away from the window. When he looked back a moment later, the faces had vanished.

The hobbit set down the table and opened the attached drawer. “Ah, a key. You might be needing that, young sir.”

He handed it to Frodo, who almost dropped the chandelier in his rush to accept it. “Thank you.”

He expected he _would_ be needing it, and so as soon as he was finished helping the gentleman to his smial and accepting a coin for his troubles, he raced back up the hill, past the crowd and the piles of furniture and the loud-mouthed auctioneer and Lobelia throwing a fit over something or other, and shoved through the front door.

He stopped when he reached the spare room and hovered there for a moment fiddling with the key. He suddenly felt very frightened. The ghost stories he’d heard in his time had never been very pleasant ones, and even if it was just Bilbo and his dwarf, he couldn’t imagine them being very happy about having their home invaded, especially by the likes of Lobelia. Eventually, it was the thought that they may know something about his parents that made him close the distance.

First he tested the knob, with no success. Then with a shaking hand he put the key into the lock. It was a tough turn at first, and then it was just stuck, as if someone on the other side were holding the knob in place. Carefully, he removed his hand entirely and waited a moment, thinking perhaps he could catch them unawares. If he listened closely, he thought he could hear indistinct whispers through the wood. Seconds later, the key popped forcefully out of the hole and went clattering to the floor by his foot.

Frodo gulped.

* * *

Bilbo and Thorin had seen Frodo glancing towards the window where they stood watching helplessly as their belongings—mostly Bilbo’s, but they had become Thorin’s too—were tossed aside to the highest bidders.

“That child saw us,” Thorin said.

“Who? Frodo? But how could he? No one can see us.”

“His face... He looked at us. _At_ us. Not through us. I am sure of it.”

“Perhaps it’s his age? Did it say anything in the book about children?” Bilbo stepped over to where the volume sat on the table and opened to the back, hoping that for once he would find an index there. Instead he found a torn and yellowing sheet folded in half and trapped between the cover and the last page, pressed flat as if it had been there for years. “This wasn’t here before.”

As Bilbo removed the paper and unfolded it, Thorin moved away from the window to peer over his shoulder. The writing was in faded black ink. At the top, in enormous, sweeping calligraphy, was an unfamiliar word, repeated three times:

_PRYFTAN_

_PRYFTAN_

_PRYFTAN_

Lower, beneath the sharp fold, was a message in smaller lettering:

_Bothered by death? Troubled by the living?_

_Once, twice, thrice, summon Pryftan and become a free spirit._

“What is this?” asked Thorin. “It was in the book?”

“Yes. It looks like some sort of... advertisement? Do you think whoever this is could help us?”

Thorin shook his head. “I don’t trust it. It feels like a trap.”

Just then they heard a hand attempting to turn the knob of the door and nearly jumped out of their skin—or whatever it was they had.

Bilbo looked at Thorin with concern, but the dwarf told him not to worry. “I locked it.”

As if in response, they heard the click of a key being inserted into said lock. They both rushed to the door and held it closed with all their weight, which was surprisingly significant, considering they weren’t technically flesh and blood. Thorin grabbed the knob tightly to prevent it from being turned.

After a moment of fighting, whoever was attempting to get in went still, but they weren’t going to fall for any tricks. Thorin whispered for Bilbo to fetch him a screwdriver from his tools. When he had it, he stuck it through the keyhole and pushed the key out the other side. They could hear it fall noisily to the floor.

“Well,” Bilbo said when they straightened up, “that should frighten them away from this room, at least. Now we just have to figure out how to frighten them away entirely.”

As Thorin returned the screwdriver to its proper place, Bilbo took up the book again, laying the newfound advertisement to the side. Best not to rule anything out, he figured, even if they weren’t yet sure this Pryftan could be trusted.

“What’s this?” Bilbo remarked after turning a few random pages. “‘In case of emergency, draw a door.’”

“Draw a door? On what?” Thorin wondered.

“The wall, I presume. Perhaps it’s like your invisible dwarf doors. Although I certainly hope we don’t have to wait until exactly the right day and exactly the right time. Who knows how long that could be, for us.”

“Well,” Thorin said, taking a stick of white chalk from his toolbox and holding it out, “shall we, then?”

Bilbo accepted it and approached the portion of the wall that offered the most space. Uncertainly, he knelt down to the floor and began to draw, dragging the chalk up and over until he reached the baseboard again. Then he stood back and admired his handiwork.

Thorin was unsuccessfully suppressing a laugh behind him. “What is so funny?” Bilbo asked.

“Of course you’ve drawn it round,” Thorin said fondly.

“Oh, what does it matter what shape it is? It’s a door. Oh, I suppose it needs a knob, doesn’t it?”

Thorin chuckled again as Bilbo drew the knob in the very center.

“You won’t be laughing when this works,” Bilbo told him. “Now, what am I to do next?” He consulted the book. “Ah, yes. ‘Knock three times.’ Simple enough.”

Bilbo approached the circle he’d just drawn and rapped his knuckles three times within it. Then he stepped back and waited for something to happen. For an impatient moment, Bilbo thought that perhaps he really should have drawn the door square, and he was preparing for Thorin to tease him, until they suddenly heard a crumbling sound from behind the wall.

It steadily increased in volume as the plaster began to crack along the chalk. Dust fell away as the hand-drawn shape transformed into a three-dimensional door, almost exactly like the one in the side of the Lonely Mountain. Except this one opened out instead of in, and it did it without any assistance.

Bilbo stepped further away as the portion of the wall he had marked swung towards him to reveal a mysterious grey-green fog, like a spring morning by the water, and yet nothing like that at all. It spilled into the room, clouding their vision for a moment, and then it retreated, beckoning to them.

Thorin and Bilbo glanced at each other. With a wordless nod, they joined their hands together between them and stepped through to whatever awaited them on the other side.


	5. Afterlife

Frodo stood petrified outside the spare room as an eerie fog crept through the space beneath the door. He had heard some very unusual sounds on the other side, as if part of the hill itself were splitting away.

Once he got his wits about him, he fled, leaving the key behind on the floor. He may have possessed the jaded demeanor of one much older than his years, not to mention an unnatural interest in all things morbid, but at the end of the day he still was only a tween, and just barely that. Believing in ghosts was one thing; actually witnessing them was another.

Without thinking, he headed for the closest thing to a parent that he possessed at the moment, although it wasn’t the ideal choice. Otho was in the study, having been asked by Lobelia to round up the books for auction. He was pacing from shelf to shelf assessing what tomes were there and looking very glum about parting with them.

“I saw something,” Frodo said when he entered the room, out of breath.

“Frodo,” Otho said disapprovingly as he shut one book and opened another, “you should be helping with the auction. Your mother would be very upset to find you idling in the house when there’s work to be done.”

“She’s not my mother,” Frodo pointed out instinctively. “But you don’t understand. There are ghosts in this house. I saw them.”

“Oh, none of that silliness now,” Otho tsked, having listened to Frodo’s macabre musings before. “There’s no time to be telling spooky stories. Out you go, then. Back to work.”

With that, he ushered Frodo out of the room and closed the door.

Frodo sighed and considered his options. Either he could allow the Sackville-Bagginses to discover the ghosts’ existence on their own, in which case it may be too late for them—and very likely for him as well, by association. Or he could confront the ghosts himself and perhaps earn their trust before they did anything too ghoulish. Enough trust to get the answers out of them that he had been so desperate for since his parents’ death.

He decided the second option was best, even though it practically made his teeth chatter. He took a deep breath and started back across the house to the spare room. It was there he discovered Lotho bending over with great effort to pick up the key that had fallen out of the lock.

“Stop,” Frodo ordered, hurrying towards the older hobbit as he straightened up, key in hand. “Give me that.”

“Why should I?” Lotho taunted, holding it out of reach.

“Because you don’t want to go in there.”

“And why not? What are you hiding in there?” Lotho narrowed his eyes. “Oh, I know what it is. It’s bigger in there, isn’t it? Bigger than _my_ room. You’re trying to get away with having the bigger one to yourself. Well, I’m not falling for it.”

He moved to unlock the door, but Frodo was faster than him. He slipped his ring onto his finger and grabbed the key from Lotho’s hand before he knew what hit him.

“Hey!” Lotho cried as Frodo shoved him aside. He stuck the key in the lock himself and slipped quickly into the room, shutting the door and locking it behind him. Lotho pounded on it. “I don’t know what evil magic you’re doing, but Mother won’t stand for it!”

Frodo heard Lotho move away, calling for Lobelia all the while. He slipped both his ring and the key into his pocket and turned to look around the room.

Well, this place certainly didn’t look haunted. It was nothing like Frodo imagined a ghostly space would be—certainly not what the books he read described, or what his Brandybuck cousins teased him with. Whatever sinister fog he had glimpsed earlier had dissipated, leaving in its wake what looked to be simply a room like any other.

Of course, the detail which most obviously made this room so decidedly unghostly was the total absence of the ghosts themselves. Perhaps they had no malicious intentions after all. Or perhaps they were just lying in wait until the right moment.

Frodo walked the length of the table at the room’s center, glancing at the various tools strewn across it, until he reached a map mounted in a hand-carved wooden frame. His ran his fingers across the shapes—acorns and oak leaves, it looked like. The map itself was an interesting sight, with the image of a bright red dragon peeking out from beneath smudges of dirt.

Bilbo’s quest to slay the dragon had been the talk of the Shire upon his return. According to gossip, he had presented a contract which detailed all sorts of peril, including the distinct possibility of being burnt to a crisp by a scaly fire-breather. Most brushed it off as the ravings of “Mad Baggins,” as they took to calling him. Frodo had often wished for the opportunity to talk to Bilbo about his adventures and learn the truth. Perhaps he might still get it.

On the far wall Frodo spotted what looked to be a chalk outline of some sort, although he couldn’t imagine what it was for. Nearby, a cozy-looking armchair was host to a book lying open and pages-down on its seat. Frodo picked it up and examined the title.

 _Instructions for the Newly Expired_.

He guessed that didn’t refer to expired vegetables.

There was another knock on the door then, this time by Lobelia. “Frodo? Are you in there? You had better get out here this instant.”

Frodo held his breath and dared not move.

“He’s in there, Mother,” he heard Lotho say. “He took the key and he disappeared, just like last time.”

“Oh, not that again,” said Lobelia. “My darling, you shouldn’t believe those ridiculous things that boy tells you. It’s making you see things that aren’t there.”

“But I did see it, Mother. He has magic.”

“Come along and let’s get you an early luncheon, shall we?”

“But Mother—”

Their quarrelsome voices became smaller and smaller. When he felt confident they were gone, Frodo collapsed into the chair with the book in his lap and began to read.

* * *

Bilbo and Thorin had made it past the fog and were currently standing in a place both magnificent and intimidating.

It was a vast hall, its marble floor as smooth and opalescent as a calm sea, with columns the size of ancient tree trunks that seemed to stretch as far as the clouds above. They walked uncertainly forward, their footsteps making no sound on the floor.

Pools of light, as if from the sun but softer, lit the space. Within one of them stood a cluster of figures. Bilbo and Thorin approached them, and as they grew nearer, they noted that they were of all different heights, a mixture of Elves, Men, Dwarves and Hobbits, at least a dozen in total. As they grew closer still, a new realization dawned—that these people were very much dead.

They could deduce this not simply because they could imagine no such eerily peaceful place being inhabitable by the living, but because they wore the proof of their demise as if it were part of their wardrobes.

There was a golden-haired elf with no fewer than three arrows lodged in his chest. A dwarf appeared to have been strangled by his own lengthy, braided beard, which had been tied like a noose around his neck. A woman bore a dark hoof print on the side of her face. Then there was the hobbit, a grey-haired fellow who was red and swollen nearly beyond the scope of his clothes with bee stings.

“Togo Toadfoot,” Bilbo said, half in surprise and half in greeting. The hobbit did not acknowledge him. None of the dead did. They merely stood there in silent patience.

“He cannot hear you,” came a brusque voice from nearby. They turned to see a podium which appeared to rise like a lustrous crystal from the floor. There stood an elf dark of hair and stern of face. Open in front of him was an enormous tome with gilded edges, and behind him were several gaping archways adorned with diaphanous curtains which blew outwards as if from a gentle and constant wind beyond.

“Are these the halls of waiting?” asked Thorin.

“No. This is where the spirits wait before passing into the halls of waiting,” the elf said, as if it should be obvious.

The halls of waiting for the halls of waiting. And life may as well be referred to as the halls of waiting for the halls of waiting for the halls of waiting. Which period of waiting Thorin and Bilbo were currently in they could not say.

“Will they always be like this?” asked Bilbo, gesturing to the gruesome figures surrounding them..

“No,” said the elf. “Their spirits will cast off the garb of death when they move on, each through a different passage, one for each of their kind.”

“So it is true,” Thorin marveled.

“Now that so many of your questions have been answered,” the elf said, “you must answer one of mine. Who are you, and why are you here?”

“I think the better question is, why _aren’t_ we here? Or at least, why haven’t we been?” Bilbo wondered, and when, in response, the elf merely stared at him without amusement, he cleared his throat and got on with the introductions: “I am Bilbo Baggins of the Shire. This is Thorin, Son of Thráin, of the Line of Durin.”

“Ah, yes,” the elf said, with a measure of recognition. He turned to a page in his book and dragged a slender finger down its length until he reached what he was looking for. “He has been expecting you.”

“Who has?” asked Thorin.

“Mandos, of course.” The elf took several stately strides across the floor and held aside the curtain of the center archway. “You may step this way.”

Thorin and Bilbo moved hesitantly towards him and slipped through the open space.

Bilbo turned before he continued and addressed the elf one last time: “May I ask your name?”

“Fëanor,” said the elf, and closed the curtain.

Bilbo stood gobsmacked, the pages of his mother’s Elven history texts flashing through his mind.

“Bilbo,” Thorin said behind him. “Shall we move on?”

“Hm?” Bilbo shook himself from his trance and turned around. “Oh, yes, of course.”

They began the walk down a long, dimly lit corridor whose walls were lined with richly woven tapestries. They depicted scenes of various subject matter, featuring Elves, Dwarves and Men, hunting and mining and fishing, in battle against dragons and ruling over kingdoms. No two were the same, and they were so large they looked as if they would have taken a loom the size of a mountain to create, if not hours and hours of handiwork.

At the end of the corridor was a figure seated on a throne. Even from such a distance, he appeared enormous, and he only grew more imposing as Bilbo and Thorin drew closer. He did not speak until they were near enough to see his onyx hair and severe brow. When they heard him, they had to take several steps backward, for his voice was ground-shaking, and it echoed in every corner of the space.

“I have been expecting you,” he boomed.

Once he had recovered from the force of the sound, it was Bilbo who replied first, nervously. “Yes, so we were told. It is an honor to meet you… sir.”

Mandos glared at him, not speaking.

“Er, we were wondering…”

“I know,” Mandos interrupted. “I know all.”

“Right. Well, then…”

Mandos was silent again.

“Can you help us?” Thorin questioned impatiently.

Mandos tapped two of his fingers—which happened to be the same in length as Thorin and Bilbo were in height—on the arm of his throne. “Where shall I begin?”

Thorin and Bilbo glanced at each other. “At the beginning?” Bilbo offered. “That is, the beginning of _this_. This being our deaths, of course.”

Mandos sighed, and they felt it against their faces. “You drowned. That much you already know. I know you know. What you do not know is that you were to be summoned to my halls, as was always intended. But the process was interrupted, and the plans changed. I received knowledge that Aulë and Yavanna desired that you not be separated. Aulë being, of course, your creator”—he nodded to Thorin—“and Yavanna, his wife, being fiercely protective of your kind.” Here he nodded to Bilbo.

“They admired your devotion to one another,” he continued, “and took pity on you. It was cruel, they claimed, to keep you together through the hardships of war, only to separate you over such a frivolous twist of fate. So the judgment was made to stay your entry to my halls and allow you to remain together in Arda.”

“Like Beren and Lúthien,” Bilbo said in hushed wonder. “Thorin, we’re like Beren and Lúthien.”

Thorin looked at him blankly, clearly not understanding who those people were. Bilbo would have to explain later.

“That is a rather bold comparison,” Mandos pronounced with a curl of his lip. “You are still dead, after all.”

“Are you saying this is a reward?” asked Thorin.

“If you prefer to think of it as such,” Mandos permitted. “Strictly speaking, in most cases it would be referred to as a curse. But a curse endured in the company of one you love may be considered a reward, if the alternative is undesirable.”

“Will this be forever?” asked Bilbo.

“My judgment is one hundred and twenty-five years.”

Bilbo and Thorin frowned at that, understanding that at the end of that time, they would have to be separated. On the other hand, they felt rather sick to their stomachs—or would have, if it were possible—over the prospect of spending that time in the presence of the Sackville-Bagginses and their descendants.

“I see your minds,” Mandos declared before they could say anything, “and I am approaching the subject. You have been attempting to expel the living inhabitants of your home. This was to be expected. You were unrelenting in life, and so you are in death. Especially you, Thorin, son of Thráin.”

His tone had enough derision in it that Bilbo had to restrain Thorin from charging forward and... Well, exactly what he planned to do wasn’t especially clear to either of them. Spit on the Vala’s boulder-sized foot, perhaps.

Mandos ignored it. “If you must take action against them, I suggest you alter your methods. Consult your instructions.”

“We’ve had a bit of trouble there, actually,” Bilbo said. “Rather inconsistent, that book.”

Mandos placed his hand to his temple in frustration. “It is not my finest work, to be sure. And yet, your circumstance is not one to be granted often, and I must say you have been very unappreciative,” he added irritably. “But if you truly cannot bear it, all I can tell you in counsel is to begin simply. It is no use to maim yourselves and each other if the living cannot witness it.”

Bilbo considered this. “What about this person in the advertisement we found? Pryf—”

“Silence!” Mandos bellowed, almost knocking them off their feet. “You must never utter his name. He is not to be trusted.”

“Who is he?” Bilbo attempted carefully.

“He is a spirit outside of my judgment. I have no place for him in my halls, and so he wanders homeless about Arda. As of now, he has taken up residence in your map.”

“ _In_ the map?” Thorin repeated, incredulous.

“Yes. And if you possess wisdom, there he shall remain, until he tires of you and moves on. He can only affect the living if he is summoned thrice by his name. I advise you strongly _not_ to do so.” Mandos straightened up. “Now, if I have answered all of your questions, I must command you to depart my halls.”

“I wonder,” Bilbo rushed to mention, “if it was Yavanna who kept our garden so lovely? I would very much like to thank her for it.”

“Have you so little faith in your own gardener?” Mandos wondered. “Not every mercy is a gift from the Valar.”

With that he waved his hand, and in an instant they found themselves in a new place entirely.

This was nothing like the halls they had just visited. It was claustrophobic and gaudily decorated and blindingly colorful. Every surface, from the walls to the floors to the furniture, was covered in the image of flowers.

“Where are we?” Thorin sneered.

“I don’t know, but it’s dreadful,” replied Bilbo as he took it all in. Then, after a moment: “Wait... Oh, no. No, no, no, no.”

“What is it?”

“This is… Oh no, it can’t be.”

“What?” Thorin asked more urgently.

“This is Bag End,” Bilbo informed him.

Indeed, it was. They were currently standing in what appeared to be the parlor, based on the view out the window. And yet that was just about the only obvious sign that this was even the same place. Gone were the warm tones and comfortable textiles of the Bag End they once knew. Instead, it felt as if they were standing inside one of Lobelia’s ridiculous hats.

“How long were we gone?” asked Thorin in amazement.

“Long enough for all of this to happen,” Bilbo estimated. “Ugh, there are flowers everywhere.”

“You like flowers,” Thorin attempted, knowing full well there was no defending this monstrosity.

“I like them when they’re growing in the garden, or sitting in a vase on the windowsill, or embroidered on a pillow or two here and there, not plastered over every surface of my home.”

He collapsed onto the sofa and was nearly swallowed whole by stiff ruffles. Thorin sat down beside him. They were silent for a moment, taking in the horror that surrounded them.

Finally, Bilbo spoke: “This won’t do. This won’t do _at all_.” He stood up and walked into the hall, which was bedecked with portraits of Lotho that were far too flattering to his complexion.

“Where are you going?” asked Thorin, moving to follow him.

“To find some sheets,” Bilbo said over his shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Silmarillion is admittedly not my jam, but I did a bit of research so I would have some idea of what I was talking about. And then I just had fun, because this is a Beetlejuice AU, after all. Hope you enjoyed.


	6. Haunting

“I can’t see through this,” Thorin grumbled from beneath his makeshift death shroud, which happened to be covered in a tiny rosebud pattern.

“You have it on the wrong way,” Bilbo informed him, twisting the sheet around until he could see the dwarf’s eyes. “The holes are on this side.”

The eyes blinked in embarrassment. “And you truly believe they will be able to see us if we wear these?” Thorin asked.

“Well, it’s worth a try, I say,” Bilbo said, donning his own sheet. “This is what the children wear when they play ghosts at the autumn festival.”

“You hobbits do have some very strange customs,” Thorin remarked.

“I suppose you arrived too late for that, didn’t you? And now we’ll never be able to attend the festival together because we’re…”

The two of them looked at each other through the holes in their sheets, the reality of their situation sinking back in.

Bilbo shook his head as if to flick away the thought. “None of that now. We have some haunting to do. Come on then, let’s start with Otho.”

Otho was in the smoking room, having been displaced from the study by Lobelia’s hat collection. After a moment’s preparation deciding exactly what sound they should make—a doleful moan seemed best—and adjusting their sheets for optimal ghostliness, they swung open the door and made their entrance.

Otho was puffing away at his pipe and scribbling a letter at his writing desk. He barely gave them a second glance, although at least now they were sure he could see them. They just weren’t who he thought they were.

“You boys should really be in bed by now,” Otho said as he dipped his quill into the inkpot.

At a loss, Bilbo and Thorin moaned louder.

Otho sighed. “Look, I’m happy to see the two of you finally getting along, but cutting holes in your mother’s best sheets is not the way to do it. She’s going to be furious if she finds out. You best think up a good excuse, because I won’t vouch for you.”

Bilbo and Thorin stopped moaning and merely stared at him.

“Now run along,” he said impatiently. “I have letters to write. I’m setting up a very important dinner with a gentleman who wants to give _you_ ”—here he used his quill to point at Thorin—“more space to grow your pipe-weed.”

He then made a shooing motion and devoted his attention fully to his letter. It was an incredibly persuasive gesture, as, without really knowing why, Thorin and Bilbo obeyed his order and shut the door behind them.

“He thought we were children,” Thorin said, his offense obvious even through the sheet.

“Well, at least he could see we were there. That’s something. Maybe it will work better on Lobelia,” Bilbo decided.

So they glided across the house and into the bedroom, where Lobelia was sleeping on top of the covers in her full day dress, beneath a canopy so flouncy it was a miracle that it didn't collapse on top of her and crush her to death beneath its weight. A candle still was burning on the bedside table and the light from the hall spilled into the room through the open door. She was on her stomach, and there was a veritable puddle of drool on the floral-embroidered pillow next to her mouth.

The sudden appearance of two ghosts wearing sheets did nothing to stir her. No matter how loudly they moaned, Lobelia didn’t wake, only swatted about her head as if an annoying insect had found its way into the room with her. They became especially discouraged once she began to snore.

“Perhaps there really is no frightening these people,” Thorin sighed.

“If we don’t,” Bilbo countered, “we’re going to be stuck having breakfast with them for the next one hundred and twenty-five years. And worse still, we won’t even be eating the breakfast.”

“Well, what do you suggest we do?”

“Why don’t you try again with Otho? Maybe I can make some progress here.”

So Thorin left Bilbo to his spooking and moved into the hall. It was there that he was surprised to encounter Frodo making his way toward the guest room. Thorin stood uncertainly before him, as they had not planned on frightening the children, but he wasn't exactly sure what else he should be doing.

The young hobbit appeared just as impressed with him as the elder members of the household had been—which is to say, not at all. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and glared at Thorin in annoyance. “Really, Lotho, the autumn festival was weeks ago. Are you trying to frighten me?”

He started to walk past without another thought, but something stopped him. He stared at Thorin’s reflection in the full-length mirror standing against the wall. Or rather, at his lack of a reflection, sheet notwithstanding.

“No feet,” Frodo marveled under his breath. Suddenly panicked, he felt in his trouser pocket for a moment, and then, seeming to find what he was looking for, he turned back to Thorin. “Are you Bilbo under there? No, you’re too tall to be him, and”—he glanced at Thorin’s feet—“you’re wearing boots. You must be his dwarf.”

“Thorin,” the dwarf introduced himself, hardly believing this was happening. “You can see my feet?”

“Yes. Not in the mirror, though. That’s how I knew. Why are you wearing a sheet, anyway?”

Thorin tugged the sheet away from his head and let it hang around his neck like a scarf. “We were trying to frighten your mother,” he admitted.

“She’s not my mother,” Frodo clarified. “And anyway, you won’t have much luck frightening her tonight. She spent the evening cleaning out your wine cellar, if you understand.”

It was then that Bilbo peeked around the corner at them, still shrouded. “Thorin, what’s happening?”

“He can see us,” Thorin informed him.

At that, Bilbo removed his own sheet and stared at Frodo in amazement. “Can you really?”

“Of course I can,” Frodo said. “I saw you a few months ago too, but when I went into the spare room, you were gone. I thought you’d left forever, but I kept the others from getting in just in case you wanted to come back.”

“But how is it that you can see us and no one else seems to?” Bilbo wondered.

“Well,” Frodo said thoughtfully, “I read through that book of yours. _Instructions for the Newly Expired_. And it said something about the living not wanting to see the dead. But I do want to see the dead. Very much so. I’ve wanted to for some time now, in fact.”

There was an uncomfortable silence at that, for everyone present understood what Frodo meant but didn’t say outright. Frodo himself changed the subject before the ghosts before him could figure out what to say.

“It could also have something to do with this,” he suggested, and produced from his pocket a simple gold ring.

Bilbo drew a sharp breath, or at least sounded like he did. Instinctively, he seemed to reach for the object, but he pulled his hand back just as quickly. Tensely, he questioned Frodo: “Where did you get that?”

“I found it,” Frodo told him.

“That is not a toy, Frodo,” Bilbo said sternly. “Magic rings are not to be used lightly. Put it away somewhere secret, and safe. And do _not_ put it on. Do you understand? Promise me that.”

Frodo appeared taken aback by his relative’s reaction, so he nodded and placed the ring back in his pocket. “I promise.”

At that moment they heard Lotho’s agitated voice as he opened the door to the nearby guest room. “I can’t sleep with you talking to yourself. You had better not be doing any more of that magic."

Quickly and quietly, the three of them—two ghosts and Frodo—hurried across the house and into the spare room, where they could speak in private. The place looked just the same as before, as Frodo had promised.

“Why are you trying to frighten everyone?” he asked when the door was closed.

“We thought we could drive you out of here,” Thorin explained. “But it has proven rather difficult.”

Frodo scoffed. “Lobelia has been waiting years for this house. I don’t think anything could drive her out, even ghosts. Why don’t you just leave?”

“We can’t,” Bilbo said. “We’ve tried.”

“So you’re trapped in this house for all of eternity?”

“Well, not _all_ of eternity. But a lot of it, at least for us.” Bilbo chuckled bitterly. “I’m finding this quest to be even more harrowing than the one with the dragon. One across Middle-earth, the other across Bag End.”

Frodo lit up at that. “So it is true? You really did set out to slay a dragon?”

“Aye,” Thorin said with a proud nod. “To reclaim my homeland.”

“And you were the ones who killed it? You killed the dragon?”

Thorin deflated at that. Bilbo gave him a reassuring pat on the back and provided what he hoped was a favorable answer.

“Not precisely,” he said. “Although we certainly contributed… something. It’s quite a long story.”

“I would love to hear it,” Frodo said hopefully, and then his expression changed. “But first, I was wondering… Well, seeing as you’re dead… Well, I was wondering if you might have seen my parents. Or heard about them? Do you think I could see them too, if only I knew where to find them?”

Bilbo flinched. He exchanged an apprehensive glance with Thorin before delivering the news. “I’m so sorry, Frodo. I’m afraid our situation is a rather unusual one. You see, most dead don’t become ghosts like us, as we just recently discovered. Your parents are likely nowhere that you can see them right now.”

“But I am sure they would want you to know that they love you, and they would be with you if they could,” Thorin added, under the assumption that not all hobbit parents, despite his limited experience, were like the Sackville-Bagginses.

Frodo blinked the beginnings of tears out of his bright eyes and nodded in understanding. “I just thought that maybe…” He looked down at his toes and shrugged. “Anyway, at least I have an answer now. I suppose I should get to bed.”

He approached the door but stopped with his hand on the knob. He turned to them with a questioning look.

“Should I keep you a secret, then?” he asked.

Thorin and Bilbo considered this for a moment.

“Well, unless you think telling the others about us might make a difference,” Thorin suggested. “Perhaps you could describe us as fearsome creatures who will stop at nothing to rid our home of intruders.”

“I can try,” Frodo said skeptically, “but I can’t promise it will work. If anything, I believe they’ll be rid of me before they even consider getting out themselves.”

Thorin and Bilbo appeared very disappointed to hear this.

“But if you still want to frighten them,” Frodo added, “I would try something new. Because the only thing those sheets will do is give Lobelia a fit over her ruined linens.”

And with that he left the ghosts to their deliberations.


	7. Pryftan

“Ghosts?” Lobelia said as she handed Frodo another potato to peel across the kitchen table. “I am hosting a dinner party for six people this evening, Frodo. I do not have time to listen to your fairy tales.”

“But it’s true,” Frodo insisted. “You can’t see them, but I can.”

“Yes, well, isn’t that convenient,” Lobelia scoffed as she chopped various herbs with no rhyme or reason. “Tell me, do you have any proof of these ghosts that only you can see?”

Frodo frowned. “No,” he admitted, and Lobelia raised her eyebrow at him. “But if you just let them put the sheets back on…”

“Not a chance. I’m not letting you near any sheets in this house ever again. I’ve already stripped your bed. Do you have any idea how much those cost? They were _custom-made_. Ow!” In her anger, Lobelia had chopped a bit too close to the tip of her finger. She sucked away a drop of blood. “Now look what you’ve made me do. Just stay quiet and peel.”

Frodo glanced apologetically at the kitchen doorway, where Bilbo and Thorin were currently standing unnoticed by the lady of the house.

“If only that knife had better aim,” Thorin snarled, and Frodo couldn’t contain his laughter.

“And just what is so funny?” Lobelia demanded.

“Nothing,” Frodo said, still smirking.

“I’ve half a mind to ban you from dinner, if I weren’t so concerned with appearances. The gentleman and his wife who will be attending tonight are here to discuss providing Lotho with a very generous patch of land to grow his pipe-weed. To think, he’s already such a success at such a young age…”

Lobelia continued gushing about her son for as long as it took Frodo to peel three more potatoes. All the while none of those present, either living or dead, were listening to her.

“Thank you for trying, Frodo,” Bilbo called over the sound of _Lotho this_ and _Lotho that_. “We’re very sorry to have gotten you into trouble with those sheets.”

Frodo shrugged it off and nodded a subtle goodbye as the ghosts slunk away from the kitchen and toward the spare room, doing their best not to stare too long at the sickening decor that surrounded them as they cut through the parlor. (That included Lotho napping on the couch with his mouth open in a continuous snore.) It was most of the reason they continued to hide themselves away. That, and they had almost been sat on twice today.

“I feel dreadful that we got Frodo mixed up in all of this,” Bilbo said as he sank into his armchair. “Perhaps it’s for the best if we stop making fools of ourselves and just accept our fate.”

“Truly?” Thorin asked, locking the door. “You wish to give up so soon?”

Bilbo sighed. “Well, I don’t know what else we can do. These people are impossible to frighten. We’ve been nothing more than a mild inconvenience for them, if that.”

Thorin sat at his table and stared down at the map that rested beside his tool box. “I had hoped we could reclaim your home as we reclaimed mine.”

“It seems we’ve each, in our own time, had a covetous dragon to deal with,” Bilbo quipped, flipping absently through the instructions. “Mine just happens to carry an umbrella.”

Thorin chuckled at that. “Perhaps we should revisit that molten gold idea after… all…”

He trailed off as something unusual caught his eye on the table. The map, usually a dull, dirty, faded thing—albeit beautiful in its sentimental value—appeared to be glowing. Thorin was reminded of the night years before in Rivendell when Lord Elrond had read the hidden runes beneath the blue-white light of the moon. This time, however, it was golden, as if every spot of ink was lit from beneath by an invisible fire.

Bilbo sensed Thorin’s sudden distraction and glanced up from his reading. “What is it?”

“It’s him,” Thorin said in quiet awe.

“Who?” Bilbo wondered, standing up to join Thorin at the table.

“Pryftan,” Thorin responded, and all at once it registered to both of them that this was the first time either of them had said the name aloud. Twice more was all they needed. But Mandos’ ominous words came echoing back to them.

He was not to be trusted, and yet he was quite possibly their only chance.

Bilbo and Thorin looked at each other, their faces illuminated by the map’s glow. Together, without words, they came to a decision—that they wouldn’t waste their death being anything but unrelenting. They’d faced a dragon together. How much worse could a rogue spirit be?

“Go on,” Bilbo urged Thorin. “Say it again.”

Thorin turned his attention back to the map. “Pryftan,” he spoke again.

The glow seemed almost to be quivering with anticipation. Just once more. That’s all they needed.

Thorin looked at Bilbo again, seeking some final reassurance. The hobbit nodded his encouragement. So Thorin swallowed, took a deep breath through his nose, and spoke the name a third and final time, in a commanding and unmistakable tone: “Pryftan.”

They hadn’t been entirely sure what would happen at this point, although they had imagined that Pryftan would be the one to change location. As it turned out, however, _they_ were the ones doing the moving. Not that it required much effort on their part. They felt a brief but forceful sensation of wind on their faces and, not a second later, found themselves suddenly standing in a place altogether unfamiliar.

Or so they thought.

“Where are we?” asked Thorin.

They were standing on what looked like it could be a dock, although it appeared to have been constructed out of paper. Ink strokes composed what was meant to be the grain of the wooden planks. Either end of the structure was rough and uneven, as if it had been torn apart. It stood like an island in the midst of what might be called water, except that it wasn’t wet. Layers and layers of paper waves with curled crests, the type that would be found in a children’s puppet show, swayed back and forth by the force of invisible hands.

Peeking out of these waves haphazardly in all directions were half-destroyed buildings, all of them constructed from what appeared to be paper and ink. Beyond these structures rose a flat background, upon which was sketched the messy outlines of trees, as well as the general shape of a mountain. Despite the crude rendering, it was unmistakable as Erebor.

All of these things, from the dock to the water to the scenery, was an ocean—or rather, a long lake—of beige and black. Well, that wasn’t entirely accurate. Some sections could better be described as brown or grey.

Once he had taken in all that there was to see, Bilbo answered Thorin’s question with the most logical conclusion, which would of course seem entirely illogical to anyone who wasn’t in their current situation.

“I think we’re _in_ the map.”

At this point in their adventure through death, what with the were-worms and the invisibility and the meeting with Mandos himself, this hardly seemed surprising. The bigger question seemed to be not where _they_ were, but where Pryftan was, and why he had chosen the ruins of Lake-town of all places to take up residence, as opposed to somewhere more pleasant—like, well, practically anywhere else.

They received the answer to one of their questions soon enough, as the paper waves began to roll more violently around them, a sure sign of stormy weather in any real-life scenario—or even, come to think of it, in a puppet show. That would make Bilbo and Thorin the puppets. They had no idea at this point just how true that was.

With a sufficiently theatrical overture out of the way, the spirit of the hour ascended out of the lake that wasn’t actually a lake and made his grand entrance. Thorin and Bilbo couldn’t say whether he matched the image they had in their minds, for they really hadn’t been expecting anything at all. Considering nothing so far had turned out how they predicted, they had quite fully given up the practice.

As it was, however, Pryftan appeared in the shape of a man, not much taller than Bard the Bowman and certainly nowhere near as enormous as Mandos. He was clad in a hooded robe that seemed to have been crafted from spun gold. It covered his entire body, save his hands, which were red as if they had been severely burned. At the ends of his fingers were long, talon-like nails. His hood was drawn over his head, leaving his face in shadow. He stepped towards them with little effort. One could say he walked on water, if it were in fact water he was walking on.

He stood there for a moment, staring at them. Or at least, they assumed he was staring at them. Finally, just when they were considering starting in on the introductions themselves, he spoke from beneath his hood. His voice was deep and reverberating, and he dragged out every _S_ sound in a lingering hiss. There was something familiar about it that registered with both Thorin and Bilbo as they listened to him.

“Ssso, you’ve come at last,” he said. “I was growing impatient. I made you aware of my ssservices ssseveral monthsss ago. What has taken you ssso long?”

As he spoke, he slowly moved forward to walk between them and around them. They caught a glimpse of his bare toes peeking out from beneath his robe. Like his hands, they too were red and raw and tipped with claws.

“Well, we thought we could handle things on our own,” Bilbo explained, smelling burnt paper as Pryftan glided past him.

“Terribly foolish,” Pryftan replied, and they could hear his grin. It didn’t sound like a particularly friendly one. “It takes a ssspirit of a particular kind to have any effect. One with vassst experience in methodsss of... intimidation.” His voice seemed to drop an entire register on the final word.

“So can you help us?” asked Thorin gruffly.

“Cccertainly,” Pryftan fizzed. “I am quite ssskilled in these mattersss, you know. I must ask you but one question. How would you prefer their demissse to occur? Shall they be crushed? Clawed?” Here he showed off his fingernails. “Burned?” He sounded particularly enthusiastic about that option.

“Demise?” Bilbo said, astonished. “No, no. We don’t want anyone dead. We just want to frighten them away so we can have the house to ourselves again.”

“Hmm,” Pryftan replied, a rumble starting in his chest. “Interesssting. Quite a pity, really. Killing them would be ssso much more sssatisfying.”

“That’s not what we want,” Bilbo insisted, beginning to think this really was the mistake Mandos warned them it would be. “If you can’t help us, perhaps we should just leave.”

“Not ssso fast. It would do you well not to give up on me so easily. Sssurely we can work out sssome sssort of arrangement. The possssibilitiessss are endlessss. Perhapsss a few disturbing hallucinationsss. Levitation? Or sssome vocal trickery. What sssay you to that?”

The source of his final two sentences was not from within the darkness beneath his hood, but rather from Bilbo’s mouth. The hobbit’s eyes grew wide as he spoke uncontrollably in the spirit’s sibilant voice, and when it was over he clapped his hand over his lips to prevent it from happening again.

“What fun,” Pryftan remarked, this time with his voice back in its proper place.

It was then that Thorin—who had been standing by attempting to identify exactly what it was about Pryftan that made him so uneasy, besides the obvious things—at last came to the unsettling conclusion that they had met this spirit before, in another form.

“It can’t be,” he said, shaking his head. And yet it was. It so obviously was. “It’s _you_.”

“Ah, yesss,” Pryftan said in amusement. “You’ve finally put it together, have you?”

Bilbo removed his hand from his mouth and looked at Thorin questioningly. “Who? Who is it?”

There was fire in Thorin’s eyes as he spoke. “Smaug.”

As soon as the name was out of his mouth, Pryftan drew back his cloak to reveal the face of a man. It was sinister and reptilian in shape, and his skin, like his hands and feet, was red and scaly. His eyes were a golden yellow, and they appeared to glow like beams of candlelight from within his head. He had a menacing smile on his face, revealing sharp white teeth that looked as if he could slice off his own tongue with them if he wasn’t careful.

They had only just gotten a good look at him before he suddenly rose from the dock with a flourishing movement and transformed in midair before their eyes. He cast off his golden robe as he cast off so much molten gold several years before. When he was bare of his manly garments, he appeared as they were most familiar with him—as an enormous winged dragon.

The beast stretched his wings and tossed his head and eventually locked eyes with Thorin and Bilbo, who stood stunned beneath him. Then he spoke in a voice that was instantly at least one hundred times as loud and booming as the one he had used in his previous shape.

“I was once known as Smaug. In death, I am known as Pryftan, and I take whatever form I please. But this form pleases me most.”

With that, his chest became flushed with an internal flame, and Bilbo and Thorin could do nothing but scutter backwards until they reached the end of the dock. They had two choices—either leap into the depths of the papery lake, or brace for an attack by fire. Considering they were already dead, they couldn’t predict with certainty what such an attack would mean for them, but they would have preferred not to find out.

Just as Smaug—or Pryftan, they didn’t have time to decide—opened his jaws to destroy them, Bilbo got an idea.

“Home! Home! Home!” he shouted as rapidly as he could without slurring his words.

Just as quickly as they arrived in the map, they arrived back in their spare room, where nothing was made of paper except for what was supposed to be.

Immediately, the two of them were doubled over catching their breath, despite the fact that they didn’t even have any. When the physical manifestations of terror are nonexistent, a ghost has to create them himself.

“How did you know to do that?” Thorin marveled.

Bilbo shrugged. “Three times to get there, three times back. It was worth a try.”

“I cannot believe we fell for his trick,” Thorin growled. “The snake. All this time he’s been living in our map and we didn’t even know it.”

“Well, he _isn’t_ living, to be precise,” Bilbo pointed out. “And neither are we, might I remind you. It was a very unpleasant surprise, to be sure. But I would imagine that he’d have followed us out here if he could,” he added hopefully. “Now that we’ve escaped, perhaps it’s best we just ignore him.”

They glanced back at the map, which was still glowing as it had been before, except this time the effect was focused on the spot where the dragon was drawn. They couldn’t hear anything, but they could imagine Smaug—Pryftan—angrily engulfing what remained of the imitation Lake-town in flames, in much the same way he had the real one. Paper or wood, it didn’t stand a chance.

“I suppose that’s it, then,” Thorin said bitterly. “We cannot accept his help, and we cannot reclaim the place on our own.”

“Not so fast,” Bilbo remarked, and Thorin raised his eyebrows. The hobbit smirked. “I have an idea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always for reading!


	8. Fright

Mr. and Mrs. Bulge, the wealthy hobbits with the land to offer, visibly winced as they took their first sips of whatever bubbly pink concoction Lobelia had mixed together to accompany dinner.

Mr. Bulge, a hobbit past his prime who had unsuccessfully attempted to cover his ebbing hairline by brushing his curls forward, cleared his throat and succumbed to Lobelia’s wordless request for his opinion. “Very good,” he choked.

His significantly younger wife, upon finding herself the next victim of Lobelia’s expectant glare, swallowed down a burgeoning gag and nodded her agreement.

Frodo smiled into his cup of water, having never been happier to be forbidden something.

Lobelia was bedecked in her finest silk dress, a bright enough yellow that it might be mistaken for the sun were it not several hours after dark. In her hair were assorted pins and decorative combs shaped into flowers, and she’d doused herself in something so potent Frodo could smell her from the other end of the table. She had ordered Otho, meanwhile, into a ruffled collar which must have been terribly uncomfortable, based on the way he clawed at his throat all evening.

“How long have you been growing pipe-weed, lad?” Mr. Bulge asked Lotho while poking at the fish on his plate. It had mercifully been cooked by Otho, who was marginally better than his wife—but only the margin between life and death.

Lotho opened his mouth, which happened to be full of food, but Lobelia cut him off. “Oh, it’s been a few years now,” she said. "It was his own idea, you know. Always such an ambitious boy. And he mastered it on his very first try. Isn’t that right, Otho?”

Otho, who was most likely not even listening, nodded obediently.

Lobelia, satisfied that her husband had played his rehearsed part in the conversation, resumed her motherly praise. “As soon as we moved into our new home here, he was right back at it. Out went the geranium bushes and in went Lotho’s crop.”

Mrs. Bulge’s ears, which were highly sensitive to even the slightest opportunity for gossip, appeared to practically wiggle beneath her coppery curls. “Hmm, out went a lot of other things as well, or so I heard,” she said.

Lobelia, who was just as receptive to gossip if only it didn’t involve her and wasn’t a distraction from her perfect child, just barely veiled her annoyance. “Well, the previous decoration simply wasn’t to my taste. I’m sure you understand. But back to Lotho…”

“Is it true about the treasure?” Mrs. Bulge asked, ruthless. “Did you find any dragon claws hidden away, or was Baggins really as cracked as they all say?”

Mr. Bulge scoffed at his wife. “My dear, what an absurd question.”

“Oh, I’m just having fun,” she assured him. “There are some very amusing rumors making their way around the Shire. Did you know, for example, that the ghosts of Mr. Baggins and that dwarf of his are haunting this very hill?”

She giggled obnoxiously. Lobelia’s threatening expression, meanwhile, didn’t make it across the table fast enough for Frodo to heed it—not that he would have anyway.

“But they are,” he chimed in, and every head at the table turned swiftly in his direction, as if they hadn’t even realized he was there.

“What’s that you say, lad?” Mr. Bulge asked.

“The ghosts,” Frodo said. “Of Bilbo and his dwarf. I saw them.”

Lobelia’s invented laughter tore through the air. “Oh, pay him no mind. That’s just a little joke Frodo likes to tell.”

“No, it isn’t,” Frodo insisted, with the same resolution as when he rejected her as his mother.

“Such a silly child,” Lobelia continued, ignoring him. “Frodo is rather fond of telling stories, you see. You’d think he would have outgrown such an overactive imagination at his age. My Lotho, as I’m sure you’ve already noticed, is very mature. I must tell you…”

Lobelia paused there, mouth open and hands mid-gesture, as if suddenly incapable of movement. The party stared at her expectantly as her eyebrows furrowed their way into some combination of confusion and fear. She glanced sideways at her husband with a pleading expression that was quite new for her.

“Dear?” Otho asked from the opposite end of the table, but she didn’t respond.

Then something highly unusual happened.

Lobelia tilted her head back and opened her mouth like a wolf howling at the moon. But the sound that came out of her was not a howl. It wasn’t even her own voice. Instead, in the lilting tone of what sounded like a drunken man, she sang, slowly and dramatically:

_There’s aaaaaaaan…_

She paused, and neither she nor anyone else in the room was quite sure how to react, for such an outburst is not normal mealtime behavior for hobbits, no matter how many glasses of something-or-other they may have imbibed.

It only got stranger from there, as the rest of the song poured from her lips in much the same manner as before.

_Inn, there’s an inn, there’s a merry old inn_

_Beneath an old grey hill,_

_And there they brew a beer so brown,_

_The man in the moon himself came down_

_One night to drink his fill_

“Lobelia,” Otho said with a nervous laugh, checking under the table and behind him for the source of the singing. “Is this some sort of joke?”

But as he and everyone else in the room quickly remembered, Lobelia was no fan of joking. Or singing, for that matter, whether it was her voice or someone else’s.

_Oooooh_

It was here that Lobelia pushed back her chair and used it as a stepping stool to stand on the table, kicking her plate and silverware aside with her bare feet. Her face was a map of horror over what she was doing, yet she was helpless to stop it.

_The ostler has a tipsy cat_

_That plays a five-stringed fiddle_

Her body, meanwhile, had started to dance. Her hands swayed back and forth, while her feet stomped a steady beat, causing everything on the table to rattle. The glasses of her dreadful drink overflowed onto the tablecloth. No, this behavior was most certainly not occurring of Lobelia’s own free will.

_And up and down he saws his bow,_

_Now squeaking high, now purring low,_

_Now sawing in the middle_

“My sweet?” Otho attempted again, as if his feeble endearments would bring her to her senses. He opened his mouth to say something further, but instead he suddenly found himself in precisely the same predicament as his wife.

He stood up swiftly from his chair, but rather than stand on the table, he merely slammed his palms onto its surface with a musical rhythm, while the same unfamiliar voice escaped his lips.

_So the cat on his fiddle played hey-diddle-diddle,_

_A jig that would wake the dead_

The next victim was Lotho, who had been staring at his parents as if trying to decide whether to be mortified or horrified. He decided on the latter just as he rose uncontrollably from his seat and began to shake his hips to and fro. He would have screamed, had he not been busy singing in the very same voice.

_He squeaked and he sawed and he quickened the tune,_

_While the landlord shook the man in the moon_

_‘It’s after three!’ he said_

Mr. and Mrs. Bulge stared at their hosts in silent dismay. It was safe to say that Mr. Bulge was reconsidering his offer, and Mrs. Bulge was already outlining in her head how best to share this juicy story with her friends.

Little did they know they would soon be accessories to this freakish behavior. Without understanding why, they suddenly began vigorously swinging their cloth napkins in the air over their heads. On and on the group sang of landlords and fiddling cats, all while dancing more athletically than they would at even the most boisterous midsummer’s eve celebration. At one point they all joined hands and sidestepped their way around the table like children around a maypole.

The only one present who wasn’t affected was Frodo. He was doubled over in a corner of the dining room, where he had escaped to protect himself from flailing arms and heavy toes. He was fairly certain of what—or rather who—was the cause of this phenomenon, and it only made him laugh harder.

He laughed his hardest, however, when he witnessed the grand finale. The party had nearly tired themselves out from dancing when they suddenly found themselves seated again. Just when they were beginning to imagine that perhaps the entire ordeal was over, they were slapped in the face with even more magic—literally.

The fish that had been resting lifeless on their plates suddenly began to wriggle. Before anyone even had time to gasp at the miracle, the resurrected, half-eaten creatures launched themselves off their beds of poorly cooked vegetables and walloped the five unwilling performers on the nose.

Frodo had to grip the back of his chair to keep himself from collapsing in hysterics.

* * *

“That was absolutely brilliant!” Bilbo cried as he and Thorin returned to the spare room. Once the door was closed he couldn’t help but shower the dwarf’s face with celebratory kisses.

“It was mostly you, _ghivashel_ ,” Thorin laughed. “Although I am rather proud of my fish trick.”

“As you should be,” Bilbo agreed, pecking him on the nose—Thorin could almost feel it. “It was the perfect ending.”

“Not as perfect as your song choice. Bofur would be proud.”

“I knew if we put our minds to it we could scare them off. Shall we watch them scatter?”

They made their excited way to the window, still smiling like fools. They were certain they would see the entire dinner party, save Frodo, running down the hill as fast as their feet would carry them, screaming and perhaps even tripping each other along the way. In fact, they wouldn’t have been surprised if the lot of them just tumbled face-first the entire distance to the bottom.

What they saw instead was an empty lane.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. After a moment or two the town lamplighter passed lackadaisically, swigging from a jug as he went. He was trampled by not a single terrified hobbit, and once he was out of sight the lane was completely still again.

“Perhaps we missed them?” Bilbo proposed, albeit disappointed that their screams didn’t carry.

It was then they heard a knock on the door. “It’s Frodo,” came the young hobbit’s voice from the other side. He sounded unhappy, which was not unusual for him, but they had rather expected him to be pleased with the turn of events.

Haltingly, they opened the door.

“They want you to come into the parlor,” Frodo said glumly. “Lobelia says you can wear any sheets you want.”

The two ghosts blinked. Surely they had misheard him.

Surely they also misheard the raucous laughter drifting down the hall, as well as the enthusiastic conversation that seemed to be occurring, of which they were apparently the subject.

“We shall make so much money!” Lobelia practically sang. “We’ll charge an entrance fee—dine with spirits! Once word gets around that the rumors are true, everyone in the Shire will be falling over themselves to have dinner here. My food shall be the talk of the town.”

“Well, perhaps we should discuss some of the recipes beforehand, my sweet,” Otho cut in.

“See, my dear,” Mrs. Bulge said to her husband. “There is some use to my gossip after all.”

“I still don’t think we can say for certain _what_ just happened,” Mr. Bulge said skeptically.

“Oh, don’t be such a bore,” his wife groaned. “What other explanation could there be?”

“I know what happened!” Lotho burst out. “It was Frodo. He has magic. He can disappear right in front of your eyes. I’ve seen it. I told Mother we couldn’t let him stay here.”

“Stop that this instant,” Lobelia snapped at him. “He’s just a tad worked up from everything that’s happened. I’m sure he’ll be much more accommodating once he understands what an absolutely perfect opportunity this will be to sell more of his pipe-weed. A smoke to go along with your supernatural experience, if you will. And of course you shall receive a very generous percentage, Mr. Bulge.”

“Well, I should like to actually _see_ these ghosts with my own eyes before I contribute to anything so unorthodox,” Mr. Bulge insisted.

“I’ve just sent Frodo to fetch them,” Otho said. “I have no idea what could be taking so long. Frodo! Have you found them yet?”

Frodo glanced questioningly at the ghosts, who were still hovering in the doorway to the spare room. Bilbo was mostly stunned at the party’s unexpected reaction, while Thorin had a more volatile response.

“I shall give them something to gossip about,” he growled, and Bilbo had to stop him from storming down the hall.

“Thorin, no,” he warned. “It’s no use. Tell them we won’t be coming out, Frodo. The least we can do is disappoint them.”

Frodo nodded apologetically and slipped off towards the parlor. And thus, with hanging heads, the ghosts closed the door. They could not say for sure when it would ever open again.

Five minutes later, however, they had their answer. As Thorin was fuming over his tool table and Bilbo was pointlessly searching for answers in the handbook, there came a pounding on the door.

“Bilbo Baggins, open the door this instant!” shouted Lobelia. “This is _my_ house now, and you will follow my orders. Two very influential hobbits just walked out of here, all because you two couldn’t show your horrid faces.”

“Frodo has a key, Mother!” Lotho tattled. “Just look in his pocket.”

“Can’t you just leave them alone?” Frodo objected. “They weren’t going to hurt you.”

“Frodo, if you don’t give me that key,” warned Lobelia, “I will see to it you eat no more than three meals a day from now until your coming of age.”

“Thank goodness!” Frodo proclaimed.

“Otho, get the key from his pocket,” she ordered before resuming her pounding. “Open this door, you miserable ghouls!”

The miserable ghouls, meanwhile, were scrambling to find a place to hide—once Bilbo had once again prevented the dwarf from exacting his spectral revenge, whatever he imagined that to be.

They had to think quickly once they heard the key enter the lock. Within seconds, the door was creaking open.

“Ugh, they must live like animals in here,” Lobelia said as soon as she stepped inside.

“Well, if you want to get particular, they aren’t _actually_ living, my dear.”

“Don’t test me, Otho. Anyway, where have they gone? You said this is where they’ve been hiding.”

“ _You_ probably scared them away,” Frodo said.

“Nonsense. Where could they even go?”

“I told you, Mother. It was all Frodo’s doing. He’s evil.”

“Hush, Lotho. I’ll hear no more of that.”

“But Mother…”

“Hmm. Some very interesting artifacts in here, my dear. Did you see this map?”

“You can’t make them do anything they don’t want to do, so why don’t we just leave them be?”

“Quite impressive detail on this frame. How fascinating.”

“Mother, look what I found…”

“There’s dust everywhere. Couldn’t even be bothered to clean. What else do they have to do, after all? Lotho, put that book down. There could be insects in it.”

“But Mother, look…”

“Must have a word with this dwarf about his technique.”

“Agh, a cobweb. Despicable. Well, they can’t hide forever. I suppose we should give them some time to think about what they’ve done. Come, Lotho.”

“Mother, this…”

“Otho, come away from those tools. They look filthy.”

“On the contrary, dear. They’re very well-kept.”

“I shall write a letter this instant inviting the Bulges back for dinner. Frodo, you must have a talk with these ghosts tomorrow and tell them if they do not make an appearance this time, we will have no choice but to clear out this entire room. That should teach them a lesson.”

“Mother!”

“Hush, Lotho.”

Lobelia continued chattering as the door creaked closed again, revealing Bilbo and Thorin pressed against the wall behind it. They used their improved ghost competence to fill themselves out to a normal depth, having turned rather flat to fit the space.

“Well, this is just splendid,” said Bilbo. “Either we spend the next century hiding like fauntlings or doing parlor tricks.”

“We must come up with something truly terrifying,” Thorin insisted.

“I’m fresh out of ideas,” Bilbo sighed, falling into his armchair. “It seems most likely they’ll just find us even more amusing. Now that they know we exist, the element of surprise is lost.”

Thorin, grumbling, lifted his map from the edge of the table where Otho had left it and moved to return it to its proper place. He paused, however, upon noticing something. Something unusual. Something unusual even considering their already unusual predicament. “Smaug is gone,” he said.

“Well, yes, there is that at least,” Bilbo replied. “Unless you count the map, of course.”

“I _am_ counting the map,” Thorin said. “He isn’t on it.”

At that, Bilbo sprung from his chair and hurried over to peek around Thorin’s shoulder. In the spot on the map where the inky red dragon had been drawn—where it had remained for years, through toil after toil—there was now only a blank space.

“I don’t suppose Otho could have erased him?” Bilbo offered.

Their examination was interrupted by an ear-splitting scream from somewhere under the hill.

It was undoubtedly Lobelia. Therefore, Bilbo and Thorin couldn’t tell you why on earth they ran so quickly through the door and towards the sound.

What happened next was even more inexplicable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there, long time no haunting! As always, I hope you've enjoyed, and thanks so much for reading!


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